The NYU Institute of Fine Arts presents
Sand, wetlands and waves: sea-level rise, ancient territories and the maritime socioenvironmental context of pre-Columbian Puerto Rico
Isabel C. Rivera-Collazo
Director, Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology
Associate Professor in Biological, Ecological and Human Adaptations to Climate Change, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Department of Anthropology, UC San Diego
This event is free and open to the public, but an RSVP is required. Please RSVP here.
Sea level has risen dramatically since the Last Glacial Maximum 25,000 years ago. Data from Colombia, Venezuela and Central America suggest that the earliest settlements of the Pan-Caribbean region date between 16 – 13,000 years ago, and thus occurred in a dramatically different landscape than that of today. Based on existing evidence from land, the earliest occupations on the Caribbean Archipelago occurred at some point between 8 – 5,000 years ago, at a time of rapid drowning of coastal lowlands around the world. In this presentation, Professor Rivera-Collazo explores sea level rise and coastal change, and how the indigenous people from the Caribbean, and on Borikén specifically, responded to those changes from the initial occupations to the 16th Century, before the European invasion.