Disasters in Temporal Context: Linking the Past and the Present—The RVCC Puerto Rico Hub

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Equity in the Archaeology of Disaster, Past, Present, and Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The IPCC 6th Assessment Report (2023) highlights that human-induced climate change triggers widespread and rapid changes that disproportionately affect communities in socially produced conditions of vulnerability to disasters. Academic convergence is needed as we search for solutions. Archaeology stresses that past instances of climate change can provide long-term perspectives of the conditions in which people have addressed livelihood challenges. Looking at the past provides transformative insights for developing tools to prepare for current and expected climate change impacts. However, mainstream disaster researchers often fail to capture the complexity of processes unfolding at local, meso, and global scales; overlooking the limits of disaster risk governance or the complex ways in which societies—from governments to communities—respond to known, new, and unfolding risks. This presentation shares how the Puerto Rico RVCC Hub integrates different forms of knowledge, including those given and transmitted from the past, to advance a comprehensive understanding of disaster outcomes. Deep knowledge exchange that delves into how communities organize around risk improves the understanding of past instances where climate hazards could have triggered catastrophes. A more nuanced approach to examining the past improves how archaeology contributes to the construction of scenarios for an uncertain future.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Equity in the Archaeology of Disaster, Past, Present, and Future   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39546.0