Shifting Tides: Impacts of Coastal Terrain on Archaeological Survey Methods

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bridging the Land and the Sea: Documenting and Assessing Climate Impacts on North Carolina’s Coastal Heritage", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Coastal terrains are highly variable, energetic, and in flux, presenting unique challenges for the survey and documentation of terrestrial archaeological sites. The North Carolina State Office of State Archaeology’s (NC OSA) Shorescape project encountered a range of field conditions during the terrestrial archaeological surveys within state-owned land in Tyrell and Onslow Counties along the North Carolina coast. This paper presents the field methodologies developed by NC OSA and AECOM prior to fieldwork, the unique challenges terrestrial archaeologists faced while working in dynamic coastal environments, and the field method adaptations and strategies developed to meet these challenges and carry out the terrestrial surveys.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Bridging the Land and the Sea: Documenting and Assessing Climate Impacts on North Carolina’s Coastal Heritage   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow