126 Geoarchaeology of Sites to Landscapes: Current Research on Long-Term Water and Soil Management and Maladaptation, Part II

This session brings together geoarchaeological projects from around the world that study ancient water and soil or agricultural management. This session will compare techniques, timing, and evidence for adaptation to past and present environmental changes.

Monday, 20 October 2025
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
HBGCC, 214D

Sediments in small endorheic basins as regional paleoenvironmental archives across a Mediterranean to Arid transect

Paper number: 126-2
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 2:00 PM – 2:15 PM

Authors

Abstract

We demonstrate the application of a multi-proxy sedimentological, geochemical, and luminescence-based  chronological  workflow in cores from three small (<10 km2) endorheic basins. These basins occupy seasonal waterbodies and are evenly spaced across a ~150 km Mediterranean-to-arid climatic gradient in Israel. The northern and central sites are within a subhumid and semiarid Mediterranean climate respectively, along the southeastern Mediterranean Sea coast. The southern site is along the fringe of the northwestern Negev Desert dunefield. The research approach yields a regional paleoenvironmental framework inferred from the sedimentary archive, corresponding to three distinct depositional phases. The earliest ~55-25 ka phase is marked by relatively moist conditions leading to weathering and soil formation in the north/central sites, and loess deposition and washdown in the Negev. The second phase (~24-7 ka) captures a phase of environmental instability, impacted from fluctuating sea levels and shoreline locations, eolian sand influx, and the establishment of a coastal paludal environment. Larger instability is seen at the southern site during the late to middle Holocene with decreasing Mediterranean-derived humidity and southerly atmospheric systems, resulting in event-based deposition of recycled sediment. Since ~6 ka, continuous and altogether constant accumulation rates reflect the stabilization of Mediterranean atmospheric circulation, sporadically interrupted by distinct second-order variations in sedimentation resulting from local, short-term climatic perturbations. These records provide a robust regional framework to understand how distinct environmental settings such as the distance to sediment sources, location along atmospheric trajectories, and the geographical context capture variations in environmental forcings through allochthonous and autochthonous processes. Decoupling site-related effects from the compiled regional trend allows tracking responses to established climatic and occupational patterns, underscoring the importance of studying spatially distributed and relatively temporally continuous archives, such as small endorheic basins.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 6

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-411961

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