3 Crossing Streams: Advances in Stream Science in the Southeast and North-Central United States

Thursday, 7 April 2022
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
North Meeting Room 205

LATE HOLOCENE PALEOENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE, MIGRATION AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE FORT ANCIENT CULTURE IN THE MIDDLE OHIO RIVER VALLEY

Paper number: 3-10
Program: Theme Sessions
Time: 10:15 AM – 10:30 AM

Authors

Abstract

Climate variability and change over multiple time scales are known to affect human behavior and cultural change. Using paleoclimate proxies, archaeology and geoenvironmental data, this study explores mid-continental drought episodes that occurred from ~1000-1500 CE which have been linked to the demise of Mississippian settlements in the middle Mississippi River Valley and lower Ohio River Valley. These drought intervals, in-turn, appear to have triggered migration and settlement to river valleys elsewhere. A growing amount of archaeological and biological data support an early wave of migrating Mississippian agriculturalists into the middle Ohio River Valley and the emergence of the Fort Ancient culture around 1050-1100 CE. A meta-analysis of datasets from the mid-continent suggests that drought, coupled with sociopolitical instability (pushes), within the middle Mississippi River Valley and the lower Ohio River Valley, especially between ~ 1100-1250 CE, versus growing season moisture availability, late winter and spring (cool season) annual floods, and fertile alluvial soils (pulls) in the middle Ohio River Valley provide a viable rationale for migration and settlement of Mississippian people eastward into the middle Ohio River Basin. These early agriculturalists seem to have often targeted floodplain and terrace environments at river confluences for settlement, especially ones with oxbow lakes, paleomeander wetlands and fertile soils, often the Huntington silt loam, such as in the lower Great Miami, Little Miami, and Scioto river valleys.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 54, No. 4

doi: 10.1130/abs/2022NC-375316

© Copyright 2022 The Geological Society of America (GSA), all rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to the author(s) of this abstract to reproduce and distribute it freely, for noncommercial purposes. Permission is hereby granted to any individual scientist to download a single copy of this electronic file and reproduce up to 20 paper copies for noncommercial purposes advancing science and education, including classroom use, providing all reproductions include the complete content shown here, including the author information. All other forms of reproduction and/or transmittal are prohibited without written permission from GSA Copyright Permissions.