Prehistoric occupation and palaeoenvironmental changes along Santa Catarina's Coastal Plain, Brazil: An integrated approach based on palynological data

Climate change and sea level variation during the Quaternary shaped the southernmost Santa Catarina's Coastal Plain and its landscape, promoting vegetation changes and different geomorphological features that resulted in the formation of sand barriers, relocation of fluvial channels, lagoons and rivers. In this context, prehistoric occupation of the territory took place through different migratory events over the Holocene. This study presents a palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the last 8000 years BP, based on pollen analysis from the core collected in Campo Mãe Luzia natural deposit (Araranguá municipality, SC, Brazil). The palynological, sedimentary, chronological and altimetric records were integrated with a revision of the archaeological data, allowing for the contextualization of the different groups within each environmental phase. Three distinct palaeoenvironmental phases are suggested for the last 8000 years BP: Phase I, characterized as an estuarine-lagoon environment, with no reports of human occupation; Phase II, a transition between the lagoon environment and the gradual formation of a coastal swamp, followed by an expansion of the sandy coastal barrier; Phase III, characterized by Atlantic rain forest development and their colonization. Human occupation was registered in the last two phases, with settlements of hunter-gatherer groups, sambaquis builders, and Meridional Jê and Guarani groups. This research is linked to the research project “Arqueologia Entre Rios do Urussanga ao Mampituba”, it was developed by the Research Group in Archeology and Integrated Management of Territory of the Universidade do Extremo Sul Catarinense (UNESC). It was supported by the Universidade do Extremo Sul Catarinense (UNESC) through the projects 01510.001172/2011-74 (IPHAN) and 455865/2014-2 (CNPq), and by the Instituto de Geociências of the Universidade Federal de Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), through the project 454804/2014-8 (CNPq). We thank to the Laboratório de Palinologia Marleni Marques Toigo (UFRGS) and to the Laboratório de Interação Animal-Planta (UNESC) for their collaboration in different steps of the research. This paper profited from helpful comments by Paulo DeBlasis and Jedson Cerezer. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion