High Place at the Water’s Edge: A Coastal Vulnerability Assessment of the Kiskiak Landscape

Summary

Coastal archaeological sites are threatened by a host of environmental change processes, including sea level rise, land subsidence, and shoreline erosion. The rates at which these processes have been occurring are increasing, exacerbated by climate change. This will cause further loss of archaeological sites and with them, the loss of knowledge of how coastal inhabitants lived and interacted with their landscape.

My research assesses the vulnerability of prehistoric and Contact period Native American sites situated around Indian Field Creek in Virginia. This area saw multiple prehistoric occupations, culminating in the protohistoric village of Kiskiak, which was part of the Powhatan chiefdom at the time of European contact. My research takes into consideration a variety of environmental and cultural variables to determine which sites are most at risk from the natural environment and which would be the greatest loss to our understanding if they were washed away from the archaeological record.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Poster Submission 2018   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 824