The Old Vero Site and the Current Paleoindian Landscape of Florida

Dr. C. Andrew Hemmings revisits the historical context for the Old Vero Beach site, famous for its controversial place in early Paleoindian studies in the U.S. This chapter also recounts the study of Early Man in Florida. Beyond this historical perspective, Dr. Hemmings provides a synopsis of the current research conducted at the site under his and James Adavasio’s direction. Important players in the study of early Florida, such as John Kost and Clarence Simpson, are included in the conversation. Together with the new study of Old Vero, Hemmings includes his and others’ research on both the Aucilla River (which this volume has mentioned several times) and the offshore research in the Gulf of Mexico. The Terminal Pleistocene landscape, and its biological and environmental setting, forms the concluding sections of the chapter.

Pre-Clovis occupation 14,550 years ago at the Page-Ladson site, Florida, and the peopling of the Americas

Stone tools and mastodon bones occur in an undisturbed geological context at the Page-Ladson site, Florida. Seventy-one radiocarbon ages show that ~14,550 calendar years ago (cal yr B.P.), people butchered or scavenged a mastodon next to a pond in a bedrock sinkhole within the Aucilla River. This occupation surface was buried by ~4 m of sediment during the late Pleistocene marine transgression, which also left the site submerged.Sporormiellaand other proxy evidence from the sediments indicate that hunter-gatherers along the Gulf Coastal Plain coexisted with and utilized megafauna for ~2000 years before these animals became extinct at ~12,600 cal yr B.P. Page-Ladson expands our understanding of the earliest colonizers of the Americas and human-megafauna interaction before extinction.

Reconstructing the migration patterns of late Pleistocene mammals from northern Florida, USA

We used analyses of the strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) ratios of tooth enamel to reconstruct the migration patterns of fossil mammals collected along the Aucilla River in northern Florida. Specimens date to the late-glacial period and before the last glacial maximum (pre-LGM). Deer and tapir displayed low 87Sr/86Sr ratios that were similar to the ratios of Florida environments, which suggest that these taxa did not migrate long distance outside of the Florida region. Mastodons, mammoths, and equids all displayed a wide range of 87Sr/86Sr ratios. Some individuals in each taxon displayed low 87Sr/86Sr ratios that suggest they ranged locally, while other animals had high 87Sr/86Sr ratios that suggest they migrated long distances (> 150 km) outside of the Florida region. Mastodons were the only taxa from this region that provided enough well-dated specimens to compare changes in migration patterns over time. Pre-LGM mastodons displayed significantly lower 87Sr/86Sr ratios than late-glacial mastodons, which suggests that late-glacial mastodons from Florida migrated longer distances than their earlier counterparts. This change in movement patterns reflects temporal changes in regional vegetation patterns.