Climate Change (Other Keyword)
151-175 (177 Records)
Risk-reducing strategies allow humans to manage ecological risk while minimising disruptions. Unpredictable resource fluctuations, i.e. ecological risk, are driven by a combination of climate conditions and climate variability. Under extreme conditions reduction strategies may fail, however, forcing a reorganisation of the social and economic structure of affected populations, as well as their technological systems. Risky conditions during the LGM, for example, affected the spatial distribution...
Stable isotope evidence for precontact Amerindian diet in Newfoundland, Canada (2016)
For a millennium, the island of Newfoundland was home to two cultures: the Palaeoeskimo, and the Amerindians who later became known historically as the Beothuk. Evidence from site distribution patterns suggests that each culture negotiated the shared space by utilizing different resources. However, after 1500 years BP, the cultural dynamics of the island began to shift as a period of climate warming altered the resources that were available on the outer coast. While the Palaeoeskimo may have...
Storytelling REDD+: Interactions and Inequalities between Global Environmental Governance and Local Lives (WGF - Dissertation Fieldwork Grant) (2017)
This resource is an application for the Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. While environmental governance initiatives, such as climate change mitigation mechanisms, are often framed in scientific and economic terms, they are entangled with diverse processes of socio-environmental change that cross ontological and epistemological borders. This research is an attempt to complicate the stories that are told about environmental governance and develop a narrative...
Submerged but Not Forgotten: Considering Climate Change Impacts on Underwater Archaeological Heritage (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Case Studies from SHA’s Heritage at Risk Committee" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. While many studies have focused on understanding and mitigating the effects of climate change on terrestrial archaeological heritage sites, far fewer have sought to explore impacts on submerged sites. New shoreline dynamics, changes in salinity, ocean acidification, and rising water temperatures are all serious potential issues for...
Taming the Flood: Religious Response to Climatic Crisis and the Cult of the Great Yu in Early China (2017)
This paper deals with changes in religious practices during a period when 'Nature' is least stable in early China. It focuses on the rapid spread of new ritual practices and emergence of new ritual networks during the Longshan period (ca. 2300-1800 BCE) as evidence for religious responses to the extraordinary climatic crisis of the late third millennium BCE. It explores the diverse manifestations of the ecological crisis in geomorphological evidence and their implications for a changing...
Teaching Climate Change in Red States (2018)
Although scientific consensus was reached on the issue of human-made climate change earlier this century, it continues to be a controversial subject in the public sphere. Archaeologists, as scientists interested in a longue durée approach to human society and the environment, have thus been thrust into another ideological battlefield as hard-fought as the theory of evolution by natural selection, but with perhaps graver consequences. As we move fully into the Capitalocene, it is of the utmost...
Terminal Pleistocene Depositional Patterns and their Hypothesized Impact on Human Populations in the Middle Atlantic Region, USA (2016)
Depositional regimes determine the burial and preservation of archaeological sites. Before, during, and after the Younger Dryas interval, we see differences in depositional patterns throughout the Middle Atlantic Region of the United States. In this paper we explore both differences and similarities in alluvial and eolian deposition within the Middle Atlantic Coastal Plain, Piedmont, and Ridge and Valley physiographic provinces of eastern North America. Using select case studies, we explore what...
Threats Abound: Responding to Climate Change and Planning for the Future at Jamestown Island (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Heritage at Risk: Shifting Responses from Reactive to Proactive" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Impacts of climate change on riverine and coastal environs have been felt by people throughout the Middle Atlantic and Jamestown Island for thousands of years. Threats to the island include: rising sea level, tidal surge, inundation, erosion and the impacts of the increasing strength and quantities of major...
Three-Minute Climate Stories: Sharing Place-Based Perspectives on Heritage at Risk (2021)
This is a forum/panel proposal presented at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Climate change is place-based. As archaeologists, we have an intimate knowledge of places and their deep histories, positioning us to tell meaningful climate stories. Our experiences connect the science of climate change to the lives of people. For this session,archaeologists have submitted 3-minute videos highlighting climate stories on at risk sites around the world. These videos...
Thule Fuel Use at Cape Espenberg, Alaska, CE 1500-1700 (2016)
We examined fuel use practices at Cape Espenberg, Alaska, between 1500 and 1700 CE. We identified charcoal remains from two Thule-era houses of different ages and analyzed our results with univariate statistics. Results suggest that Cape Espenberg’s inhabitants were selective in choosing fuels, and discerned between different woody species, perhaps according to combustion properties. Furthermore, there appears to be a greater reliance on lesser-used fuel types in the younger of the two houses....
Thule Response to Climate Change at Cape Espenberg, Alaska, CE 1500-1700 (2015)
Food plant remains and wood charcoal provide insight into how prehistoric Arctic peoples may have adapted to climate change. This study addresses Thule plant and fuel use at Cape Espenberg, Alaska from CE 1500-1700. Plant macrofossil and charcoal remains were sampled from occupation layers of three Thule semi-subterranean houses. Macrofossil and charcoal counts were analyzed using ANOVA, T-test, and Tukey Post-Hoc tests. Results indicate that plant foods contributed vitamins and fiber to Thule’s...
A ticking clock? Considerations for preservation, valuation and site management of Greenland’s coastal archaeology in the 21st century. (2017)
Documenting and evaluating the rate of deterioration at coastal archaeological sites presents a number of fundamental challenges in the Arctic. In Greenland for example, increasing soil temperatures, perennial thaws, coastal erosion, storm surges and pioneer plant species such as dwarf willow and dwarf birch are observed as increasingly detrimental to the long-term preservation of archaeological deposits and features found scattered along the country’s west coast and extensive inner fjord...
Trends and Perspectives: Heritage At Risk (HARC) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Trends and Perspectives: Heritage At Risk (HARC)" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Wind, flood, and fire are affecting archaeological sites at seemingly greater rates than previously recorded. Cultural resource managers, researchers, and government agencies are dealing with the effect of stronger and more violent storms on cultural heritage as they try to map and protect archaeological sites both on land and...
Trends in late Holocene Climate Change in Central Mexico (2015)
Lakes in central Mexico are ideal sites for the study of late Holocene climatic trends. These lakes have high sedimentation rates and their sediments are rich in pollen, diatoms and other biological remains that allow reconstructions of past environmental, ecological and climatic changes. In these lakes, precipitation, concentrated during the summer months, is frequently more important than temperature as a long-term environmental control; however, both variables are connected by climatic...
Tweeting the Flood: Student Social Media Fieldwork and Interactive Community Building (2018)
This paper will discuss hands-on uses of social media to help students engage with climate change. A central case study is an interdisciplinary design course on the Mississippi River and the city, taught in spring 2011 by coauthor Patrick Nunnally in which students confronted historic floods on the Mississippi River in real time through a series of twitter assignments. The analysis will discuss how the assignments were set up and carried out, what happened, and what the outcomes were, in...
Underwater Heritage Conservation and Climate Change in Canada (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. UNESCO's Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) highlights the need for collaborative approaches for ocean conservation and sustainability. Research in marine sciences should then include both cultural and natural resources. Underwater archaeology is therefore a vector of change and development for...
Unearthed Burial from Rising Sea Levels: A Collaborative Community Approach for Tackling Climate Change in the Torres Strait Islands, Australia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Crucial Issues in United States Department of Defense Cultural Resources Management " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Torres Strait Islands, Australia, covers 50,000 km2 and includes 300 islands, with only 17 home to community settlements. Although regional maritime culture includes seascapes rich in cosmological and spiritual meaning, many sites that constitute cultural identity are under threat due to rising sea...
Using Site Condition Data to Manage Heritage Sites for Climate Change Impacts (2016)
Heritage sites worldwide are threatened by human action and inaction; archaeologists are observers of the era of human-induced global change. We are specially positioned to use our data to examine such change through the material record. Additionally, archaeologists have been recording observations about the condition of sites for many years, even if those observations are not always intended to monitor site condition or integrity. Archaeologists in the National Park Service have, in maintaining...
Using Unmanned Aerial Systems and Historical Maps to Monitor Present and Predict Future Shoreline Impacts (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Case Studies from SHA’s Heritage at Risk Committee" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Natural and anthropogenic climate changes, specifically from sea-level rise, are drastically reshaping coastal waterways and shorelines. Few regional predictive models capture hyper-local changes. In response, this research project combined geospatial information captured with an unmanned areial system (AUS) with georeferenced maps...
Variation in butchering intensity between glacial and interglacial cycles at Pinnacle Point 5-6 (2015)
The archaeological assemblage and long stratigraphic sequence at the site of Pinnacle Point 5-6 in Western Cape, South Africa affords the opportunity to explore temporal (and possibly environmentally-mediated) changes in human behavioral regimes in the late Pleistocene. Here, examination of butchering intensity is used as a preliminary test of the hypothesis that humans would have intensified the processing of terrestrial prey in times of cooler, dryer climates, when sea levels were low and the...
Walakpa as Case Study: Rescuing Heritage and Data from a Vanishing Site (2017)
Walakpa is an iconic Arctic site with spectacular preservation, due to frozen conditions. Although many believe it to have been fully excavated, Stanford was only able to reach a third of the way to sterile soil due to permafrost, so earlier occupations of the site remain unstudied. Long considered stable, Walakpa began eroding rapidly in 2013. A single recent storm removed over 30 meters of cultural stratigraphy along a 100+ meter front. Need for rapid response prompted a large volunteer...
The Water and the Land: How the Private Sector and Government Work Together to Plan for Climate Change Impacts to Cultural Resources (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Beyond Triage: Prioritizing Responses to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Government, inclusive of the local, state, and national levels, is the largest aggregate landholder in the United States and has under its direct jurisdiction the largest array of cultural resources in the country, not to mention the cultural resources under jurisdictional oversight. As such,...
The Waters Around You Have Grown: Discovering Staten Island's Past through Protecting its Future (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Heritage at Risk: Shifting Responses from Reactive to Proactive" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Located at the tip of the New York Bight, Staten Island suffered more direct damage from Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge than any other NYC borough. In response, the Living Breakwaters Project calls for a series of house-sized concrete blocks strategically placed offshore to reduce wave energy, promote calm water,...
We Can’t Save Them All: Thoughts on Prioritization (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Accelerating Environmental Change Threats to Cultural Heritage: Serious Challenges, Promising Responses" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological sites are important sources of data on past human behavior and as valuable resources for paleoenvironmental reconstruction. They can also inform attempts to adapt to environmental change in a sustainable way. Equally importantly, they are part of the tangible cultural...
Western Mexico: Opening Act of the Mesoamerican Epiclassic (2015)
The Epiclassic has been described as a major watershed in Mesoamerican prehistory, but in different or even contradictory ways. The period has been claimed to usher in a shift from prestige to mercantile economies, religious to military political systems, territorial states to city-states, parochial to international art styles, and in the case of western Mexico, from non-Mesoamerican to Mesoamerican society. These metanarratives have privileged formal characteristics, which are in any case found...