Paleostorms and Precolonial Societies: Hurricane Deposits in Inundated Archaeological Sites in Northwest Florida

Summary

This is an abstract from the "First Floridians to La Florida: Recent FSU Investigations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

How people respond to their environment is an ongoing theme in archaeological research. However, it is not well understood how people in the past responded to rapid high energy events such as hurricanes and if planning for these events did or did not occur. To understand how hurricanes affected people in the past, we need to first be able to see hurricanes in the archaeological record. Multiple inundated archaeological sites in Northwest Florida contain Holocene deposits composed of interspersed sand and peat layers not seen in any earlier deposits. This poster looks at these sand layers through proxy evidence: microfossil, isotopic, and grain size analysis to determine if these sediments are marine sediments and therefore likely from a hurricane. These potential hurricane deposits are examined at two sites (Page-Ladson and Sloth Hole) and compared to regional paleostorm records to discuss site formation processes and human responses during the Holocene.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• First Floridians to La Florida: Recent FSU Investigations   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25586