The 1930s Dust Bowl: Geoarchaeological lessons from a 20th century environmental crisis

Abstract

The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was an environmental crisis of epic proportions characterized by unprecedented soil erosion, population redistribution, and profound transformation of the landscape in the Great Plains region of the United States. Therefore, one might expect that this event left a mark in the sedimentary and geomorphological record of the region. This study is a field reconnaissance of sedimentary and landscape changes that can be linked to the event. To achieve this objective, the Dust Bowl is analyzed as a climatic event, a geomorphic event, and a socioeconomic event. The geoarchaeological approach taken here is based on that of the archaeology of the contemporary past (Harrison and Schofield, 2010), which incidentally coincides with the Anthropocene, as defined by Crutzen (2002). The results of this survey can be useful to those who search for geomorphic evidence of environmental crises in the more distant past.