Maine Midden Minders: Racing the Clock to Document Cultural and Environmental Archives

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Heritage at Risk: Shifting Responses from Reactive to Proactive" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The Midden Minders program is a citizen-science based project designed to monitor and document the erosion of many of the approximately 2000 archaeological shell middens on the Maine coast. Virtually all these sites are eroding in the face of climate change induced sea level rise and increasing weather variability. While frequently understated in the historical New England narrative, these features represent thousands of years of cultural and environmental information. Midden Minders volunteers provide data for informed cultural resource management decisions by using simple tools to measure and record human and natural midden change. Information is archived in a database designed to protect site location and landowner privacy in a format that can be used by both heritage managers and researchers. Volunteers receive training through the program website or in sessions sponsored by conservation organizations. This collaborative effort between professionals and citizen scientists marks a new direction for Maine archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Heritage at Risk: Shifting Responses from Reactive to Proactive

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 749