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Stable isotope analysis of vegetation history and land use change at Laguna Santa Elena in southern Pacific Costa Rica

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Abstract

Laguna Santa Elena (8.9290° N, 82.9257° W, 1055 m a.s.l.) is a small lake in the Diquís archaeological sub-region of southern Pacific Costa Rica. Previous analyses of pollen and charcoal in a sediment core from Santa Elena revealed a nearly 2,000 year history of vegetation change, maize cultivation and site occupation that is consistent with the archaeological record from the lake basin and surrounding area. Here we present the results of new loss-on-ignition, geochemical and bulk stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope analyses of the Santa Elena sediments that supplement and refine the previous reconstruction. Like many lakes in Central America and the Caribbean, Laguna Santa Elena was a magnet for humans throughout its history. As a result, the lake experienced vegetation modification by humans and maize cultivation at varying intensities over a long duration. The Santa Elena sediments provide a record of palaeoenvironmental change during times of major culture change and increasing cultural complexity in the Diquís region, which occurred during intervals of broader changes driven by external forcing mechanisms, including the Terminal Classic Drought (TCD), the Little Ice Age (LIA) and the Spanish Conquest. Our high resolution lake sediment study from Santa Elena reveals details of these events at the local scale that are unobtainable by other means, including the timing of the initial intensification of maize cultivation at ca. 1,570 cal bp (ad 380) and two intervals of population decline coinciding with the TCD at ca. 1,085 cal bp (ad 865) and near the start of the LIA at ca. 683 cal bp (ad 1267).

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Acknowledgements

Core recovery, radiocarbon dating and previous pollen and charcoal analyses were funded by a grant from The A.W. Mellon Foundation to Sally Horn and Robert Sanford Jr., and by a STAR Fellowship from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded to Kevin Anchukaitis. A 2013 field visit and our new results reported here were supported by the University of Tennessee, the Center for Marine Science and College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and NSF Grant #1660185 awarded to Sally Horn, Chad Lane, and Doug Gamble. We thank Maureen Sánchez for sharing her knowledge on the archaeology of the Santa Elena site and surrounding area, and Paul Lemieux and Sarah Bleakney for laboratory assistance.

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  1. Department of Geography, University of Tennessee Knoxville, 1000 Phillip Fulmer Way, Knoxville, TN, 37996, USA

    Matthew T. Kerr & Sally P. Horn

  2. Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of North Carolina Wilmington, 601 South College Road, Wilmington, NC, 28403, USA

    Chad S. Lane

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Kerr, M.T., Horn, S.P. & Lane, C.S. Stable isotope analysis of vegetation history and land use change at Laguna Santa Elena in southern Pacific Costa Rica. Veget Hist Archaeobot 29, 477–492 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-019-00755-0

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