A Reversal Before the 1870s?

In the period before the first ground surveys in 1852, the islands were probably as dynamic as they re today. Blackbeard used the Virginia coast as a safe haven. The shifting sands of the beaches and inlet made sailing dangerous and many were not willing to take the risk. The question then is were there reversals from erosion to accretion and accretion to earosion in earlier centuries.

The graph above is a prediction of what a histogram of critical point dates would be like if there were earlier reversals and we had a way to measure the position of the shoreline in these times. Such records exist in a more general form in the reading the landscape with a geologists eye. Scott Harris, a student who compleated his graduate studies with support from the National Science Foundation, looked at the old landforms on Hog Island and concluded that in earlier times the island had gone through periods of erosion followed by accretion and visa versa.