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

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.