New Methods for New Materials: Contemporary Archaeology and Coastal Plastic Pollution

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.

As the issue of plastic pollution grows, coastal and maritime archaeological sites are increasingly being impacted by single-use plastic waste. While we can see these impacts at existing cultural resources, it is important to recognize role of plastic waste in creating entirely new, anthropogenic archaeological deposits. Outreach in historical archaeology provides a platform for reaching both the general public and working professionals in order to advocated for new ways to reduce and eliminate plastic pollution – a major contributor to petroleum-based global warming – and to advocate for archaeological sites being impacted or destroyed by climate change. This paper gathers different methods, success stories on tackling plastic pollution, heritage at risk issues, and ties these to activist archaeology and the pending climate catastrophe.

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

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Contact(s): Nicole Haddow