Late Holocene Paleo fire reconstruction of L’Anse aux Meadow

This project aims to reconstruct the late-Holocene fire record at the World Heritage UNESCO site of L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada. The site has a long history of occupation by many Indigenous groups, including the Dorset and Beothuk people, as far back as 5000 years ago It is also the first undisputed site of European presence in North America, with the Norse occupying the site around 1000 years ago. The goal of my project is to determine the fire history of the site and possibly connect fire occurrence to the human occupations of the site. This will fill in a knowledge gap in the paleo-ecological history, as a high-resolution fire reconstruction has never been done before for the site. To do this, a peat core was taken from a fen downwind of the L'Anse aux Meadows in August 2022. The core is 2 meters long, which, based on the radio-carbon dates of cores taken nearby in the area, should provide coverage of the past 6000 to 7000 years. My analysis of micro-charcoal in the core is combined with radiocarbon dates to provide a high-resolution chronology and fire record of the site.