Islands in the Stream: Fort Pulaski’s Shifting Shorelines and Rising Groundwater

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Putting Archaeology to Work: Expanding Climate and Environmental Studies with the Archaeological Record" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Excavations at Fort Pulaski’s Workers’ Village have uncovered evidence of how the fort’s builders adapted to their barrier island environment and coped with hurricanes. Past fort personnel had their own version of the National Park Service’s Resist-Accept-Direct Framework: resisting by constructing a breakwater, accepting by abandoning buildings, and directing through a ditch-and-dike system to drain the marshy island. Today’s archaeologists also had to adapt to their barrier island environment, which is rapidly changing due to climate change. Archaeologists occasionally struggled with seeing direct evidence of hurricanes in the archaeological record, especially while their units filled with groundwater, but the cultural adaptions to the climate and storms were evident in the stratigraphy of this anthropogenic landform and in the remaining traces of structures.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Putting Archaeology to Work: Expanding Climate and Environmental Studies with the Archaeological Record

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38854.0