Post-medieval Archaeology and Pollution

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Post-medieval Archaeology and Pollution," at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This session focuses on the environmental aspects of underwater and terrestrial sites and post-medieval archaeology. Despite historical and archaeological significance, heritage sites may also be a source of pollution – be that today or in history. Active pollution such as oil spillages from shipwrecks or from industrial sites due to leakage or erosion affects our daily lives but our lived environment can also be affected by post-medieval mining practices or even early nature conservation laws to name a few. The visitors and researchers of heritage sites can have an environmental impact on the area from littering to destroying flora and fauna on varying scales. The significance of such impacts extends from effects on small communities to off-world places through e.g. lunar exploration and proposed exploitation. This session welcomes papers that deal with these and similar aspects and issues of post-medieval (in its broadest sense) heritage sites without geographic restrictions.