Coastal Change and Human Dynamics: Preliminary Results of Sediment Core Analysis

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Coastal change can have major impacts on human livelihood security, in the past as well as the present. Sediment cores from coastal wetlands can be used as archives to reconstruct ancient landscapes and coastal environments as well as to understand the impact of ancient sea level inundation and intense atmospheric events. This study presents the preliminary analyses of two 2 m sediment cores, collected from a Black Mangrove swamp on the grounds of the Hacienda La Esperanza Nature Reserve in Manatí, in the central northern coast of Puerto Rico. The sediments have several visible stratigraphic changes, likely due to relative sea level rise and coastal flooding events. The top of the core shows evidence of a coastal flooding event, which we attribute to the 2017 Hurricane Maria, a Category 5 hurricane that caused major damage and significant loss of life in Puerto Rico. A record of elemental abundances determined by X-ray fluorescence also supports the interpretation of acute marine incursions punctuating longer term relative sea level rise. Ongoing and future analyses will include radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating, grain size distributions, paleobotany, and micropaleontology to better reconstruct the geomorphological and flooding history of the study area.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33026