Accelerating Environmental Change Threats to Cultural Heritage: Serious Challenges, Promising Responses
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Accelerating Environmental Change Threats to Cultural Heritage: Serious Challenges, Promising Responses," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Archaeological sites serve as cultural heritage repositories. Sites with good organic preservation, in addition to illuminating past human behavior, provide us with valuable resources for paleoenvironmental reconstruction. Our improving methodologies are increasing our ability to retrieve more varied information from archaeological sites, but accelerating environmental change poses a dire threat to the quality and quantity of data we can recover. Threats include: coastal erosion, sea level rise, riverine erosion, drying of waterlogged sites and bogs, changes in fire regimes, agricultural land use modifications amplified by population displacements, and degradation of permafrost in the north. It seems clear that these changes are unlikely to stop or even slow. In short, our "library" is on fire and we must address the wisdom of proceeding with "business as usual." We seek papers that identify challenges, direct or indirect, in the field or post-excavation, that arise from environmental change. These papers should offer examples of promising responses. We are also seeking papers that address the topic at the level of multiple sites, regionally or by state or country, as well as papers that deal with the thorny issue of how to prioritize our efforts and funding for maximum benefit to all stakeholders.
Other Keywords
Cultural Resources and Heritage Management •
Environment and Climate •
arctic •
Cultural Heritage and Preservation •
Zooarchaeology •
Climate Change •
Iron Age •
Underwater Archaeology •
Policy •
Historic
Geographic Keywords
Isle of Man (Country) •
North America (Continent) •
French Republic (Country) •
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Nort (Country) •
Ireland (Country) •
Kingdom of Belgium (Country) •
Bailiwick of Guernsey (Country) •
Faroe Islands (Country) •
Principality of Monaco (Country) •
Bailiwick of Jersey (Country)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-12 of 12)
- Documents (12)
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Climate Change, Capacity-Building and Local Engagement: Report on the 2018 Arctic Viking Field School, Vatnahverfi, South Greenland (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. The Eastern Arctic is currently observed to be undergoing significant environmental change as a direct consequence of global warming. For archaeologists working in Greenland, this means the rapid and complete loss of cultural remains due to changing soil conditions. As annual...
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Environmental Threats To Viking Age and Medieval Norse Sites in Southwestern Greenland (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. This presentation is one of the products of a series of ongoing inter-connected, international, interdisciplinary fieldwork projects coordinated by the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) research cooperative since 2005 in Greenland. The projects drew upon more than a...
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Geo-Referenced Spatial Data Analyses on Coastal Erosion Sites: the Final 3D Examination of the Pictish Smithy at the Site of Swandro, Orkney Islands (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. Coastal erosion sites contain the same complexity as any other sites, however, the sequences are often truncated and the recovery conditions require adaptive approaches. During the summer of 2018, the excavation of Structure 3, the ‘Pictish Smithy’, concluded. Here we present the...
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Improving Integration of Archaeology into the Work of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change): A Status Report (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. Modern anthropogenic climate change has its roots in the Industrial Revolution and has developed further through social and economic processes that have grown into world dependence on fossil fuels. Archaeology has much to say about these developments and provides important cultural...
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The Inglefield Land Archaeology Project in NW Greenland, 2004-16: Mitigating Cultural Resources in the Era of Climate Change (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. With support of the NSF Arctic Social Sciences program, we undertook seven field seasons (2004-2016) investigating the 4000-year history of human habitation of Inglefield Land, with particular attention to the Inughuit and their interactions with Euro-American Arctic explorers in the...
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Learning from Loss 2018: Considering Responses to Accelerated Climate Change in Scotland (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. In June 2018 interdisciplinary scholars from Scotland and the US convened in Edinburgh to consider action in the face of inevitable loss of coastal and carved stone heritage from accelerated processes related to climate change. The project, "Learning from Loss," was funded by the...
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A Perfect Storm: Alternative Mitigation Strategies for Louisiana’s Gulf Coast (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. A concatenation of natural and anthropogenic processes involving coastal erosion, subsidence and relative sea-level rise are obliterating evidence for millennia of sustainable human communities on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast. The Mississippi River Delta Archeological Mitigation (MRDAM)...
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Responding to Climate Change Threats to Archaeology through the World Heritage Convention (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. Climate change is the fastest growing threat to World Heritage properties, including archaeological sites, worldwide. Warming temperatures, sea level rise, coastal erosion, permafrost thaw, drought, worsening wildfires and more intense rainstorms, hurricanes and typhoons are putting...
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Saving the Story of Medieval Icelandic Fishery Development: Siglunes as a Case Study (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. The combination of deep sea fishing and dried fish production, and its distribution to inland consumers, is a distinctive and largely Nordic contribution to European diet and economy of eventual global impact in the 14th -17th centuries. One of the main questions is how and when this...
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Site Damage and the Perception of Change in Northwest Greenland (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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 in the Qaanaaq region of Northwest Greenland are under a variety of threats related to climate change. In addition to processes observed in other arctic contexts (increased coastal erosion and melting permafrost), the area has seen a dramatic surge in landslides...
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Smoke on the Water: Addressing the Burning Issue of Threats Climate Change Poses for Submerged Historical Sites in Florida (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. Underwater archaeological sites are often omitted from sea level rise and resiliency discussions, but these resources, which attract tourists and provide critical information about the past, are at risk. Lack of personnel, difficulty with routinely accessing sites coupled with the...
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We Can’t Save Them All: Thoughts on Prioritization (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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...