Reconstructing the Marine Paleoclimate of Southwest Madagascar
Extensive paleoclimate work has been conducted on Madagascar and its surrounding regions. However, no studies on Madagascar have applied marine paleoclimate records to archaeological data. For coastal populations, marine records are likely to be more important for understanding environmental effects on human mobility patterns, as discontinuity between terrestrial and marine proxies can occur. This project, which encompasses an international team of interdisciplinary scientists from climatology, paleoecology, and archaeology seeks to generate a multiproxy marine dataset from fossil corals. By expanding knowledge of past marine climatic conditions, we can more accurately model the effects of environmental change on coastal populations who relied heavily on maritime resources. Combined with a rapidly expanding archaeological dataset of settlements in the southwest of Madagascar, this project will greatly enhance our ability to test hypotheses regarding the paleoenvironmental factors affecting settlement and mobility in Southwest Madagascar through time.
Funding
This project is supported by a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant (BCS-2039927) and the National Geographic Society (NGS-77912R-21).