Severe Little Ice Age drought in the midcontinental United States during the Mississippian abandonment of Cahokia.

ABSTRACT: Drought has long been suspected as playing an important role in the abandonment of pre-Columbian Native American settlements across the midcontinental United States between 1350 and 1450 CE. However, high-resolution paleoclimatic reconstructions reflecting local effective moisture (the ratio of precipitation to evaporation) that are located in proximity to Mississippi period (1050-1450 CE) population centers are lacking. Here, we present a 1600-year-long decadally resolved oxygen isotope (δ¹⁸O) record from Horseshoe Lake (Collinsville, IL), an evaporatively influenced oxbow lake that is centrally located within the largest and mostly densely populated series of Mississippian settlements known as Greater Cahokia. A shift to higher δ¹⁸O in the Horseshoe Lake sediment re

SUBMITTER: Pompeani DP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8257696 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature