Post/Mining Heritage Landscapes and the Energy Transition: Digital Tech for Heritage-led, Community-driven Design Thinking.

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Digital Technologies and Public Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Thousands of post-mining communities struggle with recession, de-population, and ecological contamination. Community leaders work against oppressive odds to balance economic revitalization, environmental remediation, and cultural renewal. Mining ruins and landscapes are complex anchors of local heritage. Our research team has completed a collaborative feasibility study with the City of Negaunee, Michigan, evaluating one mine for adaptation as a giant energy storage battery. Pumped Underground Storage Hydropower (PUSH, also abbreviated UPSH) will transform abandoned mines from liabilities into valuable assets for these communities, creating sustainable industrial operations in existing brownfields. In Phase II, we will demonstrate how community-led collaborative industrial archaeology, particularly with digital tools, enables any community to complete their own pre-feasibility studies of local mines. They can subsequently shift NEPA and NHPA procedures to guide the development process in ways that major infrastructure development for the nation’s pressing energy transition also meet locally-identified needs and objectives, including heritage concerns.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Digital Technologies and Public Archaeology   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 605