CITiZAN’s Digital Toolkit: Citizen Scientists Recording England’s At-Risk Coastal Archaeology

Summary

England’s coastal and intertidal archaeology is increasingly at risk from winds, waves, rising sea levels and winter storms exacerbated by climate change and can be revealed suddenly and disappear just as suddenly. However there is no statutorily informed intervention for this heritage outside of the national planning framework for this at-risk archaeology and so no infrastructure in place to systematically record these freshly exposed sites before the next storm potentially washes them away. CITiZAN (the Coastal and Intertidal Zone Archaeological Network) is a community archaeology and citizen science project set up in direct response to these threats which raises awareness of at-risk archaeology across England. CITiZAN teaches local volunteers to identify, survey and monitor the long-term fate of their local coastal sites. This paper will discuss the rapid digital recording tools on which CITiZAN rely to not only engage with but also to mobilise wider audiences, including 3D photogrammetry, an open-access interactive website and free smartphone app to record fragile coastal and intertidal heritage and monitor changes brought about by erosion and storm damage. This enables the public to ‘take responsibility’ for the archaeology in their local areas and explore the effects of global climate change at a local level.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22562