disaster (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren J. Cook.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "“Historical Archaeology with Canon on the Side, Please”: In Honor of Mary C. Beaudry (1950-2020)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. During her career and life as a scholar, educator, mentor, colleague and friend, Mary Beaudry inspired us. To her, objects were not mere tools, but elements in discourse, products and conveyors of culture. She encouraged us to think as archaeologists, seeking solution of problems...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carrie A. Christman.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The small unincorporated town of Rockdale is located along Catfish Creek just south of Dubuque, Iowa. Rockdale developed into an important milling center until most of the town was destroyed in a catastrophic flood on July 4, 1876. The 1876 Rockdale flood is still considered one of the worst natural disasters in Iowa history. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miriam Rothenberg.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In July of 1995, the Soufrière Hills volcano began a series of eruptions that would fundamentally alter the communities and landscapes of the small Caribbean island of Montserrat. By the turn of the millennium, two-thirds of the island had been abandoned or destroyed, and a comparable proportion of the population had relocated abroad. This paper presents the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alex DeGeorgey. Michael Newland. Dana Shew.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Beyond the Shoreline: Heritage at Risk at Inland Sites" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Drought-like conditions in the western United States have contributed to a series of massive catastrophic wildfires. Indeed, the most destructive wildfires in California history have occurred in the past few years devastating whole communities, causing billions of dollars in damages, and resulting in the loss of life....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Britt.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Critical Issues in Contemporary Archaeology & Historical Archaeology: Limits, Opportunities, Challenges", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Contemporary archaeology and speculative fiction merge reality and possibility, allowing one to time travel from living in present inequities to imagining more equitable futures. Combining this with disaster archaeology allows a critical lens on the notion of returning to a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miriam A. W. Rothenberg.

On July 18th, 1995, after centuries of relative quiet, Montserrat's Soufrière Hills volcano suddenly and violently sprang to life. The months that followed saw a series of evacuations of the southern portions of the island due to the volcanic threat, rendering this landscape—including the capital town of Plymouth—an abandoned 'Exclusion Zone'. By 2000, the majority of the island's population had left more or less permanently, many for the United Kingdom. Those who stayed faced the challenge of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Shakour.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists have explored disasters throughout the discipline’s history, and these calamitous events range from volcanic eruptions, floods, earthquakes and more. The material footprint of the Irish famine presents a challenge to archaeologists investigating disasters. Further, famine-era sites are from the nineteenth century, a time not protected under...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Krysta Ryzewski. John F. Cherry. Laura McAtackney.

In the first generation after emancipation Montserrat and its residents experienced exceptional difficulties. As the society transitioned from a sugar-based economy, former slaves, estate owners, and colonial authorities collectively struggled with the devastating effects of man-made and natural disasters, including a major earthquake in 1843, and a wide range of social, economic, and legal problems. This paper examines archaeological and historical evidence from St Peter’s Parish, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Fearon. Christopher P. Morris.

Piecing together and conserving weathered timber skeletons of shipwrecks is a daunting undertaking in the best of circumstances. But, when those timbers are ripped from their resting place during a massive construction project, displaced, left exposed to the elements and general public, for weeks before being locked away, untreated, in storage for over a year, that undertaking can become a near impossible challenge. In the flurry of massive multi-agency infrastructure projects undertaken to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen V Bouzon.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Beyond Meat: Animal-Human Relations in New Orleans and Louisiana", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Disasters, in both the modern era and historically, are not static occurrences. Disasters are social experiences that affect individuals and communities in a variety of ways. While our modern perceptions of disasters include the social, emotional, and cultural aftereffects of a disaster, the same considerations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Taylor. Carl Halbirt.

This poster explores hurricane risk mitigation in colonial St. Augustine, Florida, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The city was primarily under Spanish rule during these centuries, although brief British and American periods are also represented. While St. Augustine is not a hurricane hot spot it does suffer occasional blows. Its waterfront location and the importance of shipping and fishing to the local economy made the town vulnerable to hurricane-associated wind and flooding....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isabel Rivera-Collazo.

This is an abstract from the "At the Frontier of Big Climate, Disaster Capitalism, and Endangered Cultural Heritage in Barbuda, Lesser Antilles" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sea-level rise, coastal erosion, and other climate-related hazards pose threats to coastlines around the world. Understanding these nuanced processes sheds light on the risks that local communities and heritage managers face, as well as on the longer-term impacts of human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meg Gaillard.

Following the 2015 flood event that affected the Carolinas from October 1-5, 2015, the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources Heritage Trust Program archaeologists, along with volunteers, student and professional archaeologists worked to recover artifacts, photographs, and documents located in a facility next to Gills Creek in Columbia, SC. The entirety of the archive was inundated with flood water. Learn about the disaster recovery methods used and lessons learned from this catastrophic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles A. Bello.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Social Landscapes of Settler Colonialism in the Caribbean", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. During Hurricanes Irma and Maria (2017) the Federal Emergency Management Agency engaged in an efficient debris removal program – under Mission Assignments with the Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency. A variety of additional USVI partners and private contractors were cooperating partners....

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Snead. Ann Stansell.

Euro-American experience in the western states has been profoundly shaped by the fight for resources, among which water ranks extremely high. Traditional histories of such struggles focus on policy, macroeconomics, and large-scale social transformation. Historical archaeology, in contrast, offers the opportunity to emphasize the quotidian manifestations of these conflicts, particularly as they shaped the lives (and deaths) of local residents. Current fieldwork conducted by California State...