Prioritizing What We Don’t Know: Climate Change as a Catalyst for Upland Survey

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Triage: Prioritizing Responses to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The upland forests of the Appalachians are among the most diverse natural communities in the temperate world, providing the setting for a study of change and flexibility as an essential feature of existence, both for precontact and historic cultures. However, upland archaeology has lagged due to the long-held belief that upland sites have limited signatures and are thereby less likely to provide significant information on cultural processes. Currently, archaeological sites here are compromised by climate change processes such as drought and high winds that create conditions for frequent wildfires, as well as extreme precipitation events that led to severe erosion, flash flooding, or rapid mass wasting. The lack of research makes it difficult for decision makers to develop prioritization plans in the face such threats. A GIS-based analysis of settings that are most likely be impacted by catastrophic climate-related events, coupled with archaeological models of precontact site locations, provides a process for identifying areas in the greatest need of survey. Such work is being carried out in Shenandoah National Park, where archaeologists ground-truth the geospatial analysis to further refine decision making for future work.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Beyond Triage: Prioritizing Responses to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32159