Assessing Destruction Risk of Cultural Resources: Primary and Secondary Impacts of Climate Change on the Archaeological Record

Summary

Coastal archaeological and historic sites increasingly face primary impacts of climate change, including sea level rise, flooding, and erosion. As cultural sites are subjected to destructive processes, action is generally limited to mitigation and salvage of immediately threatened significant sites, while their destruction by the resettlement of affected communities has been given little attention. This secondary impact of climate change threatens sites outside of the immediate zone of flooding and erosion. Given the importance of cultural heritage sites to descendent communities, and their preservation of paleoclimatic and environmental records in association with the record of human settlements over millennia, it is imperative that we develop standard methods for assessing destruction risk of archaeological sites within a climate change framework. Using Casco Bay area in Maine as a pilot study, this study develops a methodology for integrating decadal-to-centennial climate change projections, socio-economic and demographic data, and state and federal land use and cultural resource management regulations to create a robust, user-friendly risk assessment framework. The products are multi-scalar maps at the town and parcel level that can be used by communities and government officials to identify and prioritize threatened cultural resources facing destruction by secondary impacts of climate change.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20693