Multi-proxy paleoenvironmental data from Paulina Marsh inform human-environmental dynamics in the Northern Great Basin U.S.A.

• DOI: 10.1016/j.qsa.2024.100184
• Publication Date: 2024-03-26T07:44:59Z
• Authors: Katelyn N. McDonough; Daniel G. Gavin; Richard L. Rosenc...; Loren G. Davis; Stephen C. Kuehn; Morgan F. Smith; Grant Snitker; Chantel V. Saban; Ryan Szymanski
• Keywords: Proxy (statistics)

Understanding the dynamics between climate change and human adaptive strategies is a longstanding question driving paleoecological archaeological research in North America's Great Basin. We present multiproxy data from five sediment cores retrieved Paulina Marsh Fort Rock Basin, Oregon, an area renowned for its archaeology but lacking paleoenvironmental needed to fully contextualize those records. Radiocarbon, pollen, particle size, elemental, charcoal analyses of one core, geochronological four additional cores, reveal fluctuating vegetation communities, hydrologic conditions, fire histories during Early Late Holocene that are consistent with models proposed explain changing settlement-subsistence patterns region. There was likely emergent marsh or meadow absence Juniperus at core site Holocene. Middle deposits not due geologic unconformity, perhaps because channel migration climatic aridity. sediments record more mesic meandering stream system ∼3900 2200 years ago, followed by increase xeric-adapted last 2000 years. The lack pollen inform ongoing debates about spread These represent first Basin few lowland this age This study contributes our understanding past ecology semi-arid environments, provides new context interpretations, establishes framework future work