Dr. Matthew Peros - Hurricanes, coastal environmental change, and archaeology in the western North Atlantic

Résumé / Abstract:

In this presentation, I will discuss new research focused on understanding climate change, hurricane activity, and prehistoric human responses to these from sites in Atlantic Canada and Cuba. First, I will discuss paleotempestological research from Robinson Lake, Nova Scotia, where changes in hurricane activity have been documented from lagoon sediments back to 1100 CE. The results show that hurricanes were more common between ~1450 and 1650 CE and were rare during the Little Ice Age. The second site I will discuss, called Cenote Jennifer, located in northern Cuba, was the focus of a multi-proxy investigation using pollen, XRF core scanning, plant macrofossil, and stable isotopes to reconstruct the Holocene environments of the region. Cenote Jennifer has yielded one of the most detailed and best-dated reconstructions of Holocene environmental change in the Caribbean, including rare information on how the 8.2 kyr event and the Little Ice Age were manifest in the subtropics. In addition, our work at Cenote Jennifer is helping to answer questions to do with the rise and fall of the prehistoric Taino, the people who lived in the Greater Antilles at the time of the arrival of Columbus.