Education and Training in the Archaeology of Climate Change

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Bridging Science and Service: How Archaeologists Address Climate Change" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

As a matter of fundamental importance to the archaeology (and heritage) of climate change, climate change studies should become a common feature of archaeology (within anthropological and classical archaeology) curricula in both undergraduate and graduate studies. Teaching and training in the archaeology of climate change has not yet been the focus of recent statements of professional organisations such as the 2021 EAA Kiel Statement nor the 2022 SAA Statement on Climate Change and Cultural Heritage, and is also missing from its otherwise excellent resources on Teaching of Archaeology. This paper scrutinizes resources of other professional organizations as well as curricula in anthropology programs across the country with a particular focus on graduate programs and will present best practices (including from other countries). The paper argues that in order to train the next generation of archaeologists and heritage managers we need to rethink our curricula to provide the students both general knowledge of the archaeology of climate change and specialised skills for the field and lab. This seems especially important in times of shrinking anthropology graduate programs both in time to degree and cohort sizes but an increasing demand for our contributions to research, advocacy and policy making.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Bridging Science and Service: How Archaeologists Address Climate Change   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51413