The Middle Atlantic Regional Transect Approach to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources

Part of: SAA Electronic Symposia Papers, 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "The Middle Atlantic Regional Transect Approach to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Middle Atlantic ecological transect model has been widely applied in regional archaeological research for the past four decades. This heuristic reflects the high diversity in physiography and ecology of a region that spans the Atlantic Coast to the Appalachian Mountains in less than a day’s drive. With this approach archaeologists and cultural resource managers can make informed decisions concerning resource mitigation, preservation, and protection. This session is composed of papers that explore the range of climate change impacts on archaeological resources across the Middle Atlantic transect, including sea level rise on the coast, increasing coastal and tidal river storm surge, marsh transgression and erosion in intertidal settings, upland droughts, and increasing wildfires in the mountains. The session also engages a range of responses to these changes and illustrates ways in which archaeology is helping to understand the long-term impacts of climate change on cultural resources.

Other Keywords
Environment and Climate  • Cultural Resources and Heritage Management • Geoarchaeology • Climate Change • Woodland • Survey • Cultural Resource Management • Uplands • Sea Level Rise • Coastal and Island Archaeology 

Geographic Keywords
North America: Northeast and Midatlantic

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-7 of 7)

  • Documents (7)
Documents
  • Archaeology on Sheppard’s Island: Predictive Modeling and Heritage Preservation in Delaware’s Inter-Tidal Zone (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Wholey.

    This is an abstract from the "The Middle Atlantic Regional Transect Approach to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Delaware Bay is the second largest estuary along the U.S. Atlantic coast and is experiencing some of the gravest effects from sea level rise. Most of the estuarine shoreline is fringed by salt marshes that have been developing for over 2,000 years but are now being lost at a rate of...

  • Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Sites of the Middle Atlantic Uplands (U.S.) (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Carole Nash.

    This is an abstract from the "The Middle Atlantic Regional Transect Approach to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At first glance, the archaeological resources of the uplands of the North American Middle Atlantic region are much less vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than are tidal or coastal sites. However, as the impacts of climate change become more pronounced, archaeological sites of...

  • Katie Bar the Door: The Time for Archaeologists to Respond to Climate Change Impacts is Shorter than We Think (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Seibel.

    This is an abstract from the "The Middle Atlantic Regional Transect Approach to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Even the most aggressive models of sea level rise don’t predict major inundation in the Middle Atlantic for many decades. However, the time available to archaeologists for managing coastal archaeological sites and mitigating their inevitable destruction may be far shorter than that. As...

  • Look what just Washed up on the Jersey Shore: Climate Change and its impacts on submerged sites in New Jersey (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregory Lattanzi.

    This is an abstract from the "The Middle Atlantic Regional Transect Approach to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beginning in 2013, the office of the New Jersey State Archaeologist began receiving requests to identify artifacts found along the Atlantic shoreline and the Delaware Bay. While finding artifacts along beaches is not new, the substantial increase both in number and locations of finds can...

  • Monitoring and Managing Eroding Archaeological Resources (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris McDaid.

    This is an abstract from the "The Middle Atlantic Regional Transect Approach to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fort Eustis is an approximately 8,000 acre peninsula bound by the Warwick and James rivers in Virginia’s Tidewater region. There are 234 identified archaeological sites on Fort Eustis that range in age from 10,000 BCE to the early twentieth century. In 2010 the Fort Eustis Cultural...

  • Sea Level Rise, the Chesapeake Bay Bolide, and Managing Threats to Archaeological Sites in Coastal Maryland (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia King.

    This is an abstract from the "The Middle Atlantic Regional Transect Approach to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A study commissioned in 2015 by the St. Mary’s County, Maryland Historic Preservation Commission sought to measure the impacts of residential and commercial development on the county’s archaeological resources. The study’s findings revealed minimal impact by development but a stunning...

  • Time and Tide Wait for no Man: Responses to Sea Level Rise on Virginia's Eastern Shore (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Barber.

    This is an abstract from the "The Middle Atlantic Regional Transect Approach to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With sea level rise inevitable, archaeologists can no longer cling to the 'Preservation in Place" paradigm as there will no longer be a place. The 'place' of the past will readily become the eroding beach and, eventually, sea bottom. The Threatened Sites Program of DHR anticipated the...