What Is Going On with the Younger Dryas in Florida? Late Pleistocene Perspectives from the Aucilla Basin

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Liquid Landscapes: Recent Developments in Submerged Landscape Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Aucilla River basin in northwestern Florida contains 92 recorded sites with components predating 9000 cal BP, making it an excellent area in which to examine terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene landscape use. More importantly, some of these sites, all drowned terrestrial localities, contain strata with well-preserved organic materials in archaeological contexts, allowing us to create absolute cultural chronologies, re-create paleoenvironments, and discuss human subsistence strategies. Several of these underwater sites contain extensive terminal Pleistocene cultural components in a soil that has ages spanning the Younger Dryas and earliest Holocene and is located 4–6 m below the modern water line. Most of these soils contain multiple diagnostic artifact styles, indicating repeated reuse of key landscape localities, and providing some of the few radiocarbon ages in the entire southeastern US for several diagnostic styles. In 2022, a Suwannee point was found in association with numerous wood fragments, allowing the first absolute ages to be obtained for this type. The soils themselves illuminate the environmental conditions of the latest Pleistocene and earliest Holocene.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Liquid Landscapes: Recent Developments in Submerged Landscape Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36516.0