GEOARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FOR HOLOCENE PALEOENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE AT ASHUANIPI LAKE, LABRADOR, CANADA

This poster details post-glacial, mid- to late Holocene, paleoenvironmental change at Ashuanipi Lake, Labrador, as evidenced from geological, pedological, and archaeological investigations conducted at the multi-component Ferguson Bay 1 site (FfDn-01). Micromorphology – the study of intact, oriented samples of soil and sediment at the microscopic level – was the principal geoarchaeological technique used to investigate the site. Ashuanipi Lake formed from the melting of the Québec/Labrador ice cap, approximately 6500 years ago. Following lake-level stabilization, soils began to form across the surrounding landscape beneath a black spruce (Picea mariana) forest. Podzols are the predominant soil order in this region of Labrador, and a buried Humo-Ferric Podzol is present at the site. Its uppermost, former surface, horizon served as the habitation surface for the earliest-dated occupations at Ferguson Bay 1, ca. 2000 ¹⁴C yr BP. The Podzol is buried by a Regisol, the least developed order of soils. This younger, embryonic soil contains the post-contact period artifacts. Its superposed presence indicates a period of renewed deposition during the late Holocene, the most plausible mechanism for the emplacement of the parent sediment being an increase in precipitation. A significant increase in annual precipitation for this area, culminating around 1500 ¹⁴C yr BP, has recently been documented. An increase in regional precipitation would have initiated a concomitant increase in the erosion, transport, and deposition of sediment into the lake basin, as well as a transgressive (shoreline depositional) phase in response to rising lake levels. Fluctuations in lake level control the area of exposed shoreline and, therefore, place temporal and spatial constraints on human occupation. The result was an environmentally-imposed hiatus in occupation between roughly 1600 and 1400 ¹⁴C yr BP.