Climate Change and Cultural Response in Holocene Southeastern North America

Summary

The historical trajectories of many societies in southeastern North America have been linked to changes in climate and biota. Rainfall regimes influenced population distributions as much as political geography during the late prehistoric era, and arguably well back into the past. Likewise, sea-level fluctuations shaped settlement near changing shorelines and resulted in population movement over much larger areas. Changes in biota over large areas brought about changes in settlement at the macroscale, as when mixed hardwood communities were replaced by pines in the Coastal Plain during the mid-Holocene. These offer insight into changes and responses likely in the near future.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Understanding the Nature and Timing of Human Responses to Environmental Change

Keywords

Spatial Coverage