Recording Baselines: Getting Climate Change and Plastic Pollution Data into the Archaeological Record

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Putting Archaeology to Work: Expanding Climate and Environmental Studies with the Archaeological Record" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeological site records are a tool for recording not only a site’s cultural constituents—landscapes, features, artifacts, built environment components, etc.—but also a format for documenting any adverse impacts that have occurred to those resources. What if those site record forms were structured not only to record the standard project development impacts but allowed an option for capturing baseline information specifically on climate change impacts to cultural resources? In California, and across the United States, impacts from sea-level rise, wildfire, erosion, extreme rain events, and even plastic pollution are all becoming increasing recognized as adverse effects to cultural heritage. Information captured on site records would help focus professional attention on issues surrounding climate impacts on cultural heritage and form an important baseline from which future archaeologists, heritage preservation specialists, climate scientists, environmentalists, and other researchers could build. This poster is intended to be interactive, and input will be sought from working professionals on ways to capture data on climate change impacts to cultural resources within the context of site recordation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Putting Archaeology to Work: Expanding Climate and Environmental Studies with the Archaeological Record

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39229.0