The way cool thing about anthropological archaeology is that anything interesting can be considered within the field. Poetry? Yup. History? Yup. Climate change. Yup. Keeps me coming back!
This colorful image is from a report by Margo Schwadron, on the web from the venerable journal Antiquity, examining prehistoric settlement of the south Florida Everglades. Given the effects of small fluctuations in sea levels on this terrain, where people lived should directly reflect when that spot of ground was a) above water, and b) accessible.
Love those smeary-appearing “tree islands”. Just imagine how many bugs would attack you if you visited them.
9 April 2007 at 1:26 pm
Margo Schwadron says:
Hey – thanks for the great feedback! And you bring up an interesting point….the bugs. I can persoanlly attest to the swarms and hoards of mosquitos attacking us daily as we conducted this survey. We had to armor the crew in full-length bug-suits with face masks and hoods just to survive. Makes one wonder, how did prehistoric peoples survive? Were the bugs as bad, and what did they do to adapt? Perhaps even the climate was different, or this was pre-mosquito. Anyone know of researchers doing mid to late Holocene palaeoentomology???
Cheers-
Margo
9 April 2007 at 3:39 pm
Sammy says:
Ah, palaeoentomology, that’s a tricky field, and mosquitos don’t have life-cycles that are likely to allow their remains to survive site formation processes, in other than amber (that I can think of offhand). Hmmm….