Searching for Late Pleistocene Deposits: Recent Geoarchaeological Investigations of the Aucilla River, Florida

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.

Within the mid-channel sinkholes of the modern Aucilla River in northwest Florida, dozens of late Pleistocene archaeological sites lie inundated in both surficial and buried contexts. Despite four decades of dedicated research, however, only three of these sites have been securely dated with geoarchaeological field methods, including the 14,550-year-old Page-Ladson site. If we are to learn more about the earliest Americans, places that have the potential of containing late Pleistocene deposits, like the Aucilla River, need to be systematically investigated. This poster presents preliminary results of recent deposit-centered investigations within the lower Aucilla River. Through a combination of remote-sensing and geologic testing using percussion coring, probable late Pleistocene sediments and soils have been mapped and sampled. Located near these deposits are ex situ ivory and chert artifacts, as well as the osseous remains of Pleistocene megafauna, findings hinting that the sites identified through these deposit-centered geoarchaeological investigations have the potential to contain in situ late Pleistocene archaeological sites. The methodology presented here provides a framework for future systematic and targeted investigations of late Pleistocene deposits and archaeological sites.

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)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36131.0