Maritime Heritage at Risk: The Hurricane Irma Damage Assessment and Mitigation Strategy (HIrmaDAMS) Project

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Fort Mose Above and Below: Terrestrial and Underwater Excavations at the Earliest Free Afro-Diasporic Settlement in the United States" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In 2020, the St. Augustine Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program (LAMP) received a Hurricane Irma National Park Service Subgrant to assess and mitigate, or recommend future mitigation activities, for maritime archaeological sites impacted by Irma in 2017. The resulting project, the Hurricane Irma Damage Assessment and Mitigation Strategy (HIrmaDAMS), aims to address storm impacts made to the First Coast region along the northeast of Florida. While a majority of archaeological sites in this region were spared the brunt impact of Irma, all sites were threatened by the storm’s sustained winds and storm surge that brought historic levels of flooding, and which changed regional bathymetry, eroded shorelines, and destroyed protective dunes. However, the degree of damage to individual sites was not fully known and surveys and intensive assessments were identified as crucial. This paper reviews the impacts of the study and presents the findings thus far for priority sites in the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Fort Mose Above and Below: Terrestrial and Underwater Excavations at the Earliest Free Afro-Diasporic Settlement in the United States   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology