Effects of Atmospheric Events over Marine Ecosystems and Precolumbian Societies in Borikén

Summary

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

Climate change, as a social and environmental stressor, has the potential to threaten food security by disrupting the functioning of ecosystems. This stress is particularly enhanced during intense, unexpected events that can trigger disasters. Precolumbian Caribbean societies faced these stressors through time as environmental changes linked to climate change could have affected the availability and reliability of highly ranked species on traditional resource patches, such as coral reef fish and shellfish. Focusing on marine resources exploitation, this presentation looks at the archaeological record from Tibes Ceremonial Center in Ponce, Puerto Rico, analyzing changes in subsistence behavior before, during, and after a flood event that was possibly triggered by a major hurricane between AD 790 and 1000. The analysis articulates three types of faunal remains, chronology, recent paleoclimate data, and animal behavior to understand ecosystem change and social response, indicating an adjustment of past food exploitation strategies as human adaptation to natural disasters. The analysis concludes that the atmospheric event that flooded Tibes could have had sufficient environmental impact to disrupt the coastal ecosystems, thus leading to a temporary adjustment in the fishing strategies. This observation has important implications to the understanding of social vulnerability in precolumbian fishing societies.

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): 33559