Multi-scalar Studies of Coastal Heritage in Southwest Florida: Community-based Archaeology’s Contributions

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Methods for Monitoring Heritage at Risk Sites in a Rapidly Changing Environment", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

People experience historic sites as part of landscapes through environmental and cultural aspects of heritage. This presentation offers the initial steps toward an approach for coastal sites on the Florida Gulf Coast at multiple spatial and temporal scales using techniques from archaeology, environmental studies, and biology. At the broadest scales, the interdisciplinary team reconstructs the distribution of coastal heritage locations from the decades preceding human-caused sea-level rise to the present. At finer levels of temporal and spatial resolution, the research documents topography, vegetation, and coastal changes. At the finest scales, studies of microorganisms that inhabit historic and archaeological sites in coastal Florida are inventoried. Integrating those scales through community-based archaeology offers the social meanings for coastal heritage under threat of rising sea levels, both to motivate actions to preserve the past and prepare the public for the coming landscape transformations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Methods for Monitoring Heritage at Risk Sites in a Rapidly Changing Environment   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow