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Temperate broadleaf forests in eastern North America are diverse ecosystems whose vegetation composition has shifted over the last several millennia in response to climatic and human drivers. Yet, detailed records of long-term changes in vegetation composition and diversity in response to known periods of human activity, particularly multiple distinct periods of human activity at the same site, are still relatively sparse. In this study, we examine a sediment record from Avery Lake, Illinois, USA, using multiple metrics derived from pollen data to infer vegetation composition and diversity over the last 3,000 years. This 3,000-year history encompasses the Baumer (300 BCE–300 CE) and Mississippian settlements (1150–1450 CE) at Kincaid Mounds (adjacent to Avery Lake), and captures differences in the impact that these groups had on vegetation composition. Both groups actively cleared the local landscape for settlement and horticultural/agricultural purposes. Given the persistence of fire-tolerant Quercus in conjunction with declines in other tree taxa, this clearing likely occurred through the use of fire. We also apply a self-organized mapping technique to the multivariate pollen assemblages to identify similarities and differences in vegetation composition across time. Those results suggest that the vegetation surrounding Avery Lake was compositionally similar before and after the Baumer settlement, but compositionally different after the Mississippian settlement. The end of the Mississippian settlement occurred simultaneously with a regional shift in moisture characterized by drier summers and wetter winters associated with the Little Ice Age (1250–1850 CE), which likely prevented this ecosystem from returning to its pre-Mississippian composition. 

Abstract Drought has long been suspected as playing an important role in the abandonment of pre-Columbian Native American settlements across the midcontinental United States between 1350 and 1450 CE. However, high-resolution paleoclimatic reconstructions reflecting local effective moisture (the ratio of precipitation to evaporation) that are located in proximity to Mississippi period (1050–1450 CE) population centers are lacking. Here, we present a 1600-year-long decadally resolved oxygen isotope (δ¹⁸O) record from Horseshoe Lake (Collinsville, IL), an evaporatively influenced oxbow lake that is centrally located within the largest and mostly densely populated series of Mississippian settlements known as Greater Cahokia. A shift to higher δ¹⁸O in the Horseshoe Lake sediment record from 1200 to 1400 CE indicates that strongly evaporative conditions (i.e., low effective moisture) were persistent during the leadup to Cahokia’s abandonment. These results support the hypothesis that climate, and drought specifically, strongly impacted agriculturally based pre-Columbian Native American cultures in the midcontinental US and highlights the susceptibility of this region, presently a global food production center, to hydroclimate extremes.