Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Human Adaptation to Long Term Environmental Change

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MS Katharine Napora and Dr. Victor Thompson of the University of Georgia will undertake research on the effects of climate shifts on the Native American groups who lived along the Georgia Coast from 4500 to 3100 years ago. This research will clarify the temporal relationships between abandonments of coastal shell ring village sites and environmental change. This research into the dynamics of human-environmental interactions on the Georgia Coast contributes to broader knowledge of responses to major climatic change, long-term environmental trends, and differential resilience during pivotal transitions in the southeastern U.S. This project will contribute information about how such groups were able to adapt to dramatic ecological shifts. This work will also provide opportunities both for undergraduate researchers to gain experience in dendrochronological methodologies and for the broader public to learn about the deep cultural and environmental history of the Southeast coast through outreach and educational events held during the course of the project. To conduct this research, the project will examine terminal radiocarbon dates from shell middens and create a 6000-year bald cypress ringwidth chronology from excavated samples from the region. Dendrochronology is a methodology uniquely suited for an integrated study of events experienced at the human timescale and understood within the context of a deep time framework. Using tree-ring data combined with modeling the final occupational dates of large terminal Late Archaic sites, this research aims to reconstruct climatic conditions and provide a more precise timeline of shell ring abandonments for the northern Georgia Coast. This study will generate annual-scale data on environmental conditions during this period and will model extant and new radiocarbon dates from shell ring and shell midden sites to compare to the dendrochronological sequence, allowing for greater precision in understanding the timing of shifts in subsistence and settlement traditions.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.