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1. Modeling the potential impact of storm surge and sea level rise on coastal archaeological heritage: A case study from Georgia

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297178  

   Howland, Matthew D; Thompson, Victor D (February 2024, PLOS ONE)

   Adnan, Mohammed_Sarfaraz Gani (Ed.)

   Climate change poses great risks to archaeological heritage, especially in coastal regions. Preparing to mitigate these challenges requires detailed and accurate assessments of how coastal heritage sites will be impacted by sea level rise (SLR) and storm surge, driven by increasingly severe storms in a warmer climate. However, inconsistency between modeled impacts of coastal erosion on archaeological sites and observed effects has thus far hindered our ability to accurately assess the vulnerability of sites. Modeling of coastal impacts has largely focused on medium-to-long term SLR, while observations of damage to sites have almost exclusively focused on the results of individual storm events. There is therefore a great need for desk-based modeling of the potential impacts of individual storm events to equip cultural heritage managers with the information they need to plan for and mitigate the impacts of storm surge in various future sea level scenarios. Here, we apply the Sea, Lake, and Overland Surges from Hurricanes (SLOSH) model to estimate the risks that storm surge events pose to archaeological sites along the coast of the US State of Georgia in four different SLR scenarios. Our results, shared with cultural heritage managers in the Georgia Historic Preservation Division to facilitate prioritization, documentation, and mitigation efforts, demonstrate that over 4200 archaeological sites in Georgia alone are at risk of inundation and erosion from hurricanes, more than ten times the number of sites that were previously estimated to be at risk by 2100 accounting for SLR alone. We hope that this work encourages necessary action toward conserving coastal physical cultural heritage in Georgia and beyond. 

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2. Preserving coastal environments requires an integrated natural and cultural resources management approach

   https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf090  

   Mehta, Jayur Madhusudan; Chamberlain, Elizabeth L; Helmer, Matthew; Haire, Elizabeth; McCoy, Mark D; van_Beek, Roy; Wang, Haizhong; Yu, Siyu (March 2025, PNAS Nexus)

   Milner, George (Ed.)

   Abstract Integration of natural and cultural resource management is urgently needed to combat the effects of climate change. Scientists must contend with how human-induced climate change and rapid population expansion are fundamentally reworking densely inhabited coastal zones. We propose that a merger of archaeology, environmental science, and land management policy—different yet intertwined domains—is needed to address dramatic losses to biocultural resources that comprise coupled cultural-natural systems. We demonstrate the urgency of such approaches through analyses of coastal archaeological regions within the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts where sea level rise is a primary threat, and we extend our findings globally through an assessment of primary risk factors and forecasts for archaeological sites in the Netherlands, Peru, and Oceania. Results show that across the U.S. Gulf Coast and in Oceania, where little hard infrastructure is in place to protect archaeological sites, hundreds of low-lying coastal sites will be lost under future climate scenarios. In other coasts, like that of the Rhine-Meuse Delta (the Netherlands), risks range from erosion caused by periods of flooding to the degradation of wetland sites caused by extreme droughts. In coastal Peru, population pressures pose the primary risk to archaeological sites through rapid agro-industrial growth, urban expansion, and El Niño climate variability. Across all risks, we propose that management strategies to mitigate losses to biocultural resources must be approached as a restoration process of linked sociocultural and physical environmental systems. 

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3. Transformative Impacts of Sea-Level Rise, Storm Surge, and Wetland Migration on Intertidal Native Shell-Bearing Sites in Florida’s Largest Open-Water Estuary, Tampa Bay, Florida, USA

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-024-01329-8  

   Rogers, Jaime A.; Jackson, Kendal (February 2024, Estuaries and Coasts)

   Although shell middens and mounds often occupy the same intertidal spaces as coastal wetlands, biophysical interactions between these cultural features and wetlands are under-investigated. To this end, our geoarchaeological and zooarchaeological research at three coastal archaeological sites within the Tampa Bay Estuary, USA, sought to understand the interactions between shell-bearing sites, sea-level rise, storms, and migrating wetland habitats. Percussion core transects document the accretion of mangrove peat atop intact shell midden, illustrating the ability of mangrove forests to encroach shell midden and preserve cultural material below. Landward wetland deposits are thicker and muddier than those along the seaward margin of the sites, suggesting that shell-bearing sites attenuate wave energy much like other shoreline stabilization structures. Differences in sedimentology, stratigraphy, and invertebrate species compositions highlight the variability in storm impacts between sites. Storm-driven depositional events are identified by medium-to-fine sand beds with high densities of fragmented shell and small intertidal zone snails. Geospatial analyses indicate that wetland encroachment is already occurring at 247 archaeological sites within the Tampa Bay Estuary. Approximately 100 additional archaeological sites currently located in upland habitats may provide topographic relief for migrating coastal wetlands in the future. We contend that shell middens and mounds constructed by Indigenous peoples are important components within estuarine mosaics, as they have been for millennia. We advocate for further collaboration between archaeologists and estuary managers and the inclusion of descendant communities to co-manage the future of their past. 

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4. Sourcing Obsidian from Late Neolithic Sites on the Great Hungarian Plain: Preliminary p-XRF Compositional Results and the Socio-Cultural Implications

   https://doi.org/10.24916/iansa.2019.2.1  

   Riebe, Danielle J. (November 2019, Interdisciplinaria Archaeologica)

   Significant archaeological research has been conducted on chipped stone tools recovered from prehistoric sites throughout Eastern Europe and the Balkans. The limited number of obsidian geological sources throughout the region, combined with the relatively homogeneous nature of obsidian and the increased use of new techniques for conducting compositional analysis in the field, has facilitated in accurately sourcing obsidian artifacts from sites in the region. This article presents the compositional results of 203 obsidian artifacts recovered from seven Late Neolithic (5,000 – 4,500 BCE) sites from the Great Hungarian Plain. Compositional results of the archaeological specimens obtained with a Bruker portable X-ray fluorescence device (p-XRF) were compared with obsidian geological compositional data to determine artifact provenience. By sourcing the obsidian chipped stone tools, it is possible to reconstruct prehistoric patterns of exploitation/exchange and to note how these patterns vary throughout the Plain. The results illustrate that a majority of the studied artifacts originated from the Carpathian 1 source, however, a limited number of samples came from the Carpathian 2E and Carpathian 2T sources. Based on this preliminary study, the variation in geological source exploitation may be linked to socio-cultural practices that differentiated the Tisza and Herpály archaeological units during the Late Neolithic. 

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5. Embedding the remote sensing monitoring of archaeological site damage at the local level: Results from the “Archaeological practice and heritage protection in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq” project

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269796  

   Laugier, Elise Jakoby; Abdullatif, Nawzad; Glatz, Claudia (June 2022, PLOS ONE)

   Asouti, Eleni (Ed.)

   Today, the satellite-based monitoring of archaeological sites and site damage is a widespread practice, especially in conflict-affected regions. However, the vast majority of these remote sensing cultural heritage monitoring efforts have been led and conducted by remote researchers, and there remains an urgent need to embed this work within existing, in-country institutions at local and regional levels. Here, we present the archaeological site monitoring approach and results from the project Archaeological Practice and Heritage Protection in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq , a collaborative project between the Sirwan Regional Project and Kurdish Iraqi archaeologists aimed at generating a fully functional and sustainable programme of archaeological site management co-created with, and managed by, Kurdish Iraqi archaeologists and antiquities officials. Between August 2018 and February 2020, 376 archaeological sites in the Sirwan/Upper Diyala River Valley region, located in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, were assessed for damage by Kurdish Iraqi archaeologists in collaboration with the Sirwan Regional Project. This work represents the first large-scale, systematic dataset of archaeological site conditions and longer-term damage in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). Our results show that 86.7% of the assessed archaeological sites and 38.6% of the site surface area in this region were affected by damage between 1951–2018, and demonstrate the great urgency with which action must be taken to develop appropriate safeguarding measures for the KRI’s archaeological heritage. On the basis of these results, we outline relevant recommendations for the immediate protection of archaeological sites in Garmian and the greater Kurdistan Region. 

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