What’s up with the sand? Site Formation Processes of (Undateable?) Sites in the Southeastern US

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Geoarchaeology in First Americans Research, Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Aucilla River drainage of Northwestern Florida contains extensive archaeological evidence dating to the late Pleistocene and early Holocene (ca. 14,560-8,000 cal B.P). In the river channels, hundreds of lithic tools have been recovered from surface contexts, and some mid-channel sinkholes contain material culture within intact, dateable stratigraphic deposits. Late Pleistocene soils are frequently overlain by early Holocene marls and mid-late Holocene peats. Outside of the river channels, late Pleistocene and early Holocene sites tend to have poor organic preservation with diagnostic artifacts in conflated and undateable contexts similar to the rest of the Southeastern US. In summer 2024, we conducted excavations on three of these terrestrial upland sites in extensive sand deposits, discovering that all three contained a buried component with late Pleistocene/early Holocene diagnostic artifacts underneath a mid-late Holocene component. Several years of submerged site excavation have shown that sand deposition is episodic (and dateable due to preserved organics within and bracketing it). Comparisons between terrestrial and underwater contexts provide evidence for more complex site formation processes than previously recognized, and potentially, hope for buried and undiscovered early sites in the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Geoarchaeology in First Americans Research, Part 1   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51225