Modelling Age and Sedimentation Rates at the Page-Ladson Site

Summary

Stone tools and mastodon bones occur in an undisturbed geological context at the Page-Ladson site, Florida. Age models were created for excavation unit 50N/23E and core PLAD-AUC14-4A to estimate age ranges and sedimentation rates. The models were constructed using Bayesian models as implemented in OxCal to calibrate ages, combine equivalent age estimates, exclude outliers, and estimate deposition rates. The models were used to provide age estimates for artifacts recovered from the site, correlate deposition at the site with the Late Pleistocene transgression, and provide influx estimates for Sporormiella spores as proxy evidence for the presence of megafauna. Taken with other evidence, the analysis demonstrated that about 14,550 years ago people butchered or scavenged a mastodon next to a pond in a bedrock sinkhole within the Aucilla River. This occupation surface was buried by approximately 4 m of sediment during the late Pleistocene marine transgression, which also left the site submerged. Peak concentrations of Sporormiella occur around ~13,700 cal y B.P. may indicate peak megafaunal abundance in the vicinity of the sinkhole. A rapid decline in spore concentrations by ~12,600 cal y B.P. occurs after the onset of the Younger Dryas Stadial.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Moments in Time: Re-creating History with the Bayesian Approach

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14419