Bridging the Land and the Sea: Documenting and Assessing Climate Impacts on North Carolina’s Coastal Heritage

Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Bridging the Land and the Sea: Documenting and Assessing Climate Impacts on North Carolina’s Coastal Heritage," at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

As the conference theme highlights, change is inevitable, and we live in a time of constant and continuous environmental change. A coastal state, North Carolina faces environmental and climatic impacts as acute and continuous events. Hurricanes are a looming threat, and in 2018, Hurricanes Florence and Michael struck the state, causing significant damage to the state’s economy, tourism, and cultural resources. The National Park Service released Emergency Supplemental Historic Preservation Funds to document, assess, and mitigate damage to these cultural resources. The NC Office of State Archaeology developed two projects to assess impacts on archaeological resources and cemeteries in twelve coastal counties. This session presented the development and methodologies of these projects, their results, the successes and limitations of the studies across diverse coastal environments, management strategies and implications of preservation action, and their significance within the larger landscape of change in Coastal North Carolina.

Other Keywords
Climate Change • Management • Preservation • Climate • North Carolina • Archaeology • Field Methods • Cemeteries • Cemetery • Fisheries

Geographic Keywords
North Carolina • Eastern United States • Coastal North Carolina • Southeastern US • North Carolina, coast, Outer Banks • North Carolina's Outer Banks

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-8 of 8)

  • Documents (8)
Documents
  • Bridging the Land and the Sea: North Carolina's ESHPF Hurricane Projects and Other Environmental Impacts (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Allyson G Ropp.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bridging the Land and the Sea: Documenting and Assessing Climate Impacts on North Carolina’s Coastal Heritage", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 2018, North Carolina experienced the impacts of two major hurricanes - Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Michael. These storms altered the shape of coastal communities, including the cultural and archaeological resources that lie at or below sea level along the...

  • Foul weather friends and allies: Considering NC Coastal Cemetery Management (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa A Timo.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bridging the Land and the Sea: Documenting and Assessing Climate Impacts on North Carolina’s Coastal Heritage", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The NC OSA has recently completed fieldwork for the NC Coastal Historic Cemetery Survey Project. This research, funded through a NPS Emergency Supplemental Historic Preservation Fund grant, was designed to identify, document, and assess the condition of historical...

  • Porpoises and Probable Plots: NCOSA and the Search for a Submerged Cemetery (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Atkinson. Allyson Ropp. Melissa Timo.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bridging the Land and the Sea: Documenting and Assessing Climate Impacts on North Carolina’s Coastal Heritage", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Just off the north coast of Hatteras Island on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, sits an isolated 0.01-acre parcel, tantalizingly called “Cemetery” in county records. While something cultural is visible beneath the shallow waters via satellite imagery, locals profess no...

  • Shifting Tides: Impacts of Coastal Terrain on Archaeological Survey Methods (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca A. Sigafoos. Adam K. Parker. Scott K. Seibel.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bridging the Land and the Sea: Documenting and Assessing Climate Impacts on North Carolina’s Coastal Heritage", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Coastal terrains are highly variable, energetic, and in flux, presenting unique challenges for the survey and documentation of terrestrial archaeological sites. The North Carolina State Office of State Archaeology’s (NC OSA) Shorescape project encountered a range of...

  • Shoreline Change: Developing Predictive GIS Models (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Dhingra.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bridging the Land and the Sea: Documenting and Assessing Climate Impacts on North Carolina’s Coastal Heritage", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. As part of the North Carolina Shorescapes project, AECOM determined shoreline change rates at 22 terrestrial archaeological sites in Tyrrell and Onslow Counties. Methodologies were based on the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management and its 2019 study of annual...

  • Shorescape Underwater 1 – Methods and Results (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Amber L Cabading. Adam Parker.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bridging the Land and the Sea: Documenting and Assessing Climate Impacts on North Carolina’s Coastal Heritage", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In late 2023, AECOM performed an underwater archaeological remote-sensing survey concurrently with terrestrial archaeological investigations on behalf of the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology. The remote-sensing survey employed a marine magnetometer,...

  • Time, Wind, and Waves: Protecting Coastal Heritage in North Carolina (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam K Parker. Scott Seibel.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bridging the Land and the Sea: Documenting and Assessing Climate Impacts on North Carolina’s Coastal Heritage", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Sea level rise and intensifying storm systems are an increasing threat to many archaeological sites throughout coastal North Carolina, including submerged archaeological resources. While shoreline erosion presents the greatest threat to terrestrial resources, maritime...

  • The Trolley Problem: Which Ones Do We Save? (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott K Seibel.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bridging the Land and the Sea: Documenting and Assessing Climate Impacts on North Carolina’s Coastal Heritage", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Even without the threat of sea level rise, many coastal archaeological sites are under threat of, or are, actively eroding away; sea level rise and the increasing frequency and intensity of storm events will only exacerbate the issue. With all of the known, and...