Submerged inland landscapes of the Aucilla basin, Northwest Florida, USA: populating the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene landscape

Abstract

ABSTRACT Archaeological data have demonstrated that modern Florida was occupied by at least 14,550 years ago, but evidence of Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene peoples (ca. 14,600–8,000 cal B.P.) is limited to far inland and upland settings, as more than half of Florida’s peninsula was drowned between ca. 21,000–6,000 cal B.P. Rising aquifer levels of the Late Pleistocene allowed some interior sites to preserve within forming river channels, especially some springfed sinkholes that became the Aucilla River of northwest Florida. Terrestrial sites are poorly preserved in comparison, containing stone tools in mixed and/or undateable stratigraphy. Geospatial analysis of the 92 early sites in the Aucilla basin demonstrates that the underwater sites are crucial to provide a more robust understanding of early people, as the earliest sites are found only underwater, and the preponderance of the multicomponent sites also are inundated.