Using Alluvial Sequences to Detangle Climate Change and Social Processes in the Caribbean: An Example from Borikén (Puerto Rico)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Alluvial sequences have proven to be useful archives retaining proxy information about past climate and environmental changes associated with episodes of human habitation in different contexts. In the insular Caribbean, proxy evidence from sedimentary records such as these have provided a window into understanding the timing and processes of human arrival and early niche construction in the archipelago. In this paper, I present new data that clarifies how lowland river valleys in northcentral Borikén (Puerto Rico) responded to climate change from the Mid to Late Holocene (ca. 6,400 cal BP). This new sedimentary record is based on floodplain sequences containing a series of paleosols chronologically associated with the first arrival of Archaic groups to the island. These ancient surfaces span the entire Archaic cultural period. Thus, this sedimentary archive allows a further understanding of the climate and environmental processes that contextualized initial landscape domestication and settlement in Borikén.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 54024