Contributions from the Archaeological Record: Climate Proxies and El Niño-Southern Oscillation

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a complex climatic phenomenon that has shaped both the environment and human behavior on the North Coast of Peru for millennia. Currently, El Niño, a component of ENSO, occurs every 3-8 years. Often associated with heavy rains that penetrate this normally arid coastal desert, ENSO brings flooding, erosion, and an interruption of marine upwelling that disrupts fisheries productivity. Archaeological records show that ENSO activity and intensity have varied throughout the Holocene. Key to better understanding ENSO’s impacts on human populations is the improvement of our current, incomplete record based on multiple, often conflicting proxies. Additionally, understanding past variations of ENSO is imperative to improving modeling and predictions of El Niño, particularly important in the current regime of anthropogenic forcing. Archaeological data are among the most promising sources of climate proxies in this desert, where higher-resolution metrics such as nearby marine corals, tree rings, and pollen are often nonexistent. This metadata study develops a database of ENSO proxies for temporal and spatial comparison. Samples producing conflicting stories of ENSO behavior are examined to understand potential sources of error. Gaps in the overall record are addressed with legacy archaeological and climatological data and fieldwork.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26310