A new depositional model for the buried 4000 yr BP New Orleans barrier: implications for sea-level fluctuations and onshore transport from a nearshore shelf source

Abstract The Holocene New Orleans Barrier Complex, now buried by the St. Bernard delta of the Mississippi River, provides an excellent example of barrier deposition fed by a nearshore sediment source. This reworking and onshore transport was initiated by a sudden change in the shelf equilibrium profile caused by a sea-level fall about 4100 yr BP. Here we present a new model of barrier formation which does not invoke an Shepard-type Holocene sea-level curve nor the supply of sediment from a longshore source. The Holocene New Orleans Barrier Complex consists of fine-grained, locally cross-bedded, quartz sand that contains Ophiomorpha nodosa burrows and disarticulated mollusks, primarily marine, buried beneath up to 4 m of silty mud of the St. Bernard Lobe. This barrier island and shoal deposit overlies interbedded, fine-grained sand and mud containing marine mollusks, some articulated, that is interpreted to be a nearshore shelf deposit. Its deposition took place between 5500 and 4200 yr BP (14C), based on individual dates on seven articulated and seven disarticulated shells. The barrier formation is effectively limited to a several-hundred-year window approximately 4000 yr BP by the 3800 yr BP Rangia sp. shells from the immediately overlying St. Bernard Lobe delta-plain deposits and the buried 3900–3500 yr BP Linsley archeological site, situated on a more gulfward distributary levee. In this paper we present a new depositional model on the New Orleans Barrier. The barrier complex contains an abundance of large mollusk shells that have been reworked to the extent that 14 individual shells yield a 2500-year range, 6000–3500 yr BP. An older, nearby source is required. The current model of a spit/shoal complex migrating westward from an eroding eastern Pleistocene headland probably cannot account for the deposition of large reworked shells given the effects of abrasion and selective size sorting over approximately 50 km of longshore transport. Furthermore, this model demands transport rates of millions of cubic meters per year for the present northern Gulf coast which are at least an order of magnitude higher than its highest known rates. We postulate a nearby shell and sand source that is subjacent and offshore rather than adjacent and littoral. We propose it to be the underlying nearshore shelf deposit that could be mobilized by a brief fall of sea level and carried landward. The barrier complex and the uppermost nearshore shelf deposit have markedly different net deposition rates. The upper 25 cm of the nearshore shelf deposit were deposited over 800 years, based on ages of articulated marine pelecypods. A 20-km-long, 3-km-wide and 4-m-thick segment of the barrier complex was deposited in less than 300 years. A 10-cm-thick lag pavement of bryozoan- and oyster-encrusted mollusk shells that comprises the nearshore shelf deposit beneath the northern edge of the barrier complex is evidence for an essentially zero net deposition rate. The current interpretation of a conformable, progradational relationship between these two units is rejected in favor of a disconformable contact. The hiatus across this disconformity must be less than the several-hundred-year duration of barrier complex deposition. The positioning of the shallower-water barrier complex disconformably over the deeper-water nearshore shelf deposits indicates a sea-level fall.