Assessing Local Variability and Storm Impacts in Coastal Paleoenvironment Models

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Re-Visualizing Submerged Landscapes", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Developing accurate reconstructions of changes in coastal geomorphology is critical to understanding how past sea-level rise inundated landscapes and influenced human activities. Previous approaches to coastal reconstructions have often been limited to “bathtub” reconstructions that use regional or global eustatic sea-level curve values to inundate modern topographic surfaces. These methodologies often do not account for non-linear sedimentation processes, erosion, and local environmental contexts. Our work as part of the Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology (SCMA) combines current paleogeographic modeling and sedimentary core studies to better understand past coastal ecosystem transformations patterns. This paper will present our recent modeling and sediment core sampling work on the site of Playa Machuca, located on the northern coast of the main island of Puerto Rico, to highlight how a consideration of local environmental contexts and sedimentation processes can improve paleo-coastline modeling and inform our understanding of human responses to changing coasts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Re-Visualizing Submerged Landscapes   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow