A Multiproxy Analysis of Fire, Vegetation, Climatic, and Anthropogenic Activity during the Mid- to Late Holocene in the West Desert of Utah, United States

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Pollen from cave sediments within Hogup Cave and pollen and macroscopic charcoal found in a nearby 268 cm sediment core were analyzed and used as proxies to reconstruct the paleoecological and anthropogenic record of Hogup Cave and the surrounding region, found in the West Desert of Utah. The relationship between Paleoindians and their use of the environment can be disentangled by examining regional and ethnobotanical pollen from Hogup Cave, which has been intermittently occupied and its stratum previously dated. Several radiocarbon dates were acquired in the Crescent Springs sediment core to create a Bayesian age model representing sediment deposition. We focused on the last 6,000 years, when the last substantial occupational hiatus occurred in Hogup Cave. There is a conspicuous lack of fire prior to ~6,000 years, likely due to regional depopulation and reduced fuel load during the middle-Holocene dry period, after which many peaks of various magnitudes in both woody and grassy charcoal occur.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37423.0