Anthropogenic climate change is actively destroying humanity's cultural heritage in many parts of the planet. The collection of articles that follow focus on the nature of this destruction in coastal areas, with an emphasis on how impacts to the archaeological record in these settings are being monitored and documented, how the general public is involved in these efforts, and how the resulting information and support are being used to guide planning and mitigation responses. The case studies are drawn primarily from the southeastern United States and the British Isles but also include examples from other parts of the world and in other environmental settings, including underwater locales, where many heritage resources threatened by rising seas will soon be located. The threats posed by climate change to specific kinds of artifacts, features, sites, and landscapes like those examined here are diverse and accelerating. Although the challenges we face are great, the case studies in this issue show, by example, specific ways in which archaeologists and historic preservation specialists can develop the human and financial resources needed to address them at local to national scales.
In addition to presenting and evaluating specific technical methods worthy of adoption, these articles, perhaps just as importantly, show how public engagement and support can be developed to implement climate response actions. The losses that are occurring are rapid and dramatic, involving the very real destruction of much or all of the record of the human past in many parts of the planet. To know how to proceed, we must improve our understanding of where threatened resources are located, how the losses will occur, and at what time scales the destruction will play out. We need to markedly increase our human capacity to deal with these challenges, training people to collect data in the field and laboratory, directly in person or remotely; to produce technical studies and planning and mitigation programs; and to engage, educate, and enlist public support. Our audiences are broad, and the articles here show how we can simultaneously engage with them personally, professionally, and politically.
The scope and urgency of the challenges we face are such that archaeologists and other researchers, planners, and resource managers must collaborate with all affected parties if we are to rescue an accurate record of what will be lost; this collaboration is especially important with local, descendant, and Indigenous communities who know the areas under threat best of all (Atalay Reference Atalay2012; Miller Reference Miller, Paulo A, Funari, Orser, Lawrence and Symonds2020; Shakour et al. Reference Shakour, Kuijt and Burke2019). These articles demonstrate, through example, that there are many ways forward and that a collaborative and distributed effort taking many different approaches among many parties, rather than a monolithic effort directed by one group or organization, is the best way to proceed (Anderson Reference Anderson2024; Burke et al. Reference Burke, Peros, Wren and Boisard2021; Kansa et al. Reference Kansa, Kansa, Wells, Yerka, Myers, DeMuth, Bissett and Anderson2018; Little and Shackel Reference Little and Shackel2007; Miller and Murray Reference Miller and Murray2018; Nassaney Reference Nassaney2021; Ortman and Altschul Reference Ortman and Altschul2023; Supernant et al. Reference Supernant, Baxter, Lyons and Atalay2020). Developing and implementing ways to share and communicate results and then to use them iteratively moving forward are critical parts of this process, and several articles show how this is being done over multiyear spans among their participants and with large and varied publics. Sharing approaches, results, and lessons learned, the following articles show us, is the best way to proceed. Many of the article authors, in fact, regularly meet and work together, at venues such as the weekly online North American Heritage at Risk (NAHAR) meetings (Miller et al. Reference Miller, Murray, Kemp, Lee, Simmons-Jenkins, Cochran and Gaillard2024, herein) and in writing and presenting papers in thematic sessions at workshops, conferences, and in journals like this one. These are examples of the ways in which a rapidly growing number of people are working collectively to accelerate practice, knowledge transfers, and public and political support to help address the impact of the climate crisis on our heritage.
The Threat to Cultural Heritage
That climate change is a major threat to the stability of human civilization is increasingly well documented in a vast and growing scientific literature. Major synthetic updates on where conditions stand appear every few years, including the assessment and related reports by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; 2023a, 2023b; see Kohler and Rockman [Reference Kohler and Rockman2020] for a guide to the IPCC literature for heritage resource professionals) and the US Global Change Research Program National Climate Assessment (US Global Change Research Program 2021; see also Crimmins et al. Reference Crimmins, Avery, Easterling, Kunkel, Stewart and Maycock2023). These are massively detailed reporting efforts providing the latest scientific evidence for climate change and offering recommendations on how to address impacts on the planet, biosphere, and our civilization at regional, national, and global scales. Until recently, threats to the archaeological, historic, and cultural record of the past received scant attention in these overviews; fortunately, this situation is starting to change, as the realization sinks in that the records of all peoples past, present, and future are under threat and that knowledge of what came before is essential to shaping where we are going. Increasing numbers of researchers are focusing on documenting how climate-driven processes are actively affecting and, in some cases, erasing, cultural heritage resources (e.g., see broad research summaries in International Council on Monuments and Sites 2019; Miller and Wright Reference Miller and Wright2023; Union of Concerned Scientists 2014, 2018). Methods for estimating and mitigating these losses are being developed in many areas and cover many kinds of cultural resources (e.g., Anderson Reference Anderson2023; Anderson et al. Reference Anderson, Bissett, Yerka, Wells, Kansa, Kansa, Myers, Carl DeMuth and White2017; Reeder-Myers and McCoy Reference Reeder-Myers and McCoy2019; Reimann et al. Reference Reimann, Vafeidis, Brown and Tol2018; Rockman and Hritz Reference Rockman and Hritz2020; Rockman et al. Reference Rockman, Morgan, Ziaja, Hambrecht and Meadow2016). There is much more that needs to be done to ensure cultural heritage, and specifically the record of the human past under threat, which should receive greater attention from policymakers, politicians, and particularly those responsible for producing assessment reports (e.g., Kohler and Rockman Reference Kohler and Rockman2020; Rockman Reference Rockman2022, Reference Rockman2024). Fortunately, the subject is increasingly regarded as worthy of consideration.
These articles help show us ways to proceed. Much of the work by archaeologists and cultural resource managers exploring the impacts of climate change has been directed to documenting the scale of the threat or methods for addressing it, typically on a case-by-case basis within specific settings or locales or with regard to certain artifact, site, or resource types. This thematic issue of Advances in Archaeological Practice builds on this body of literature by featuring case studies and best practices for monitoring heritage at risk sites, using examples from the southeastern United States and other parts of the world. Methods that archaeologists and researchers in other fields can use collaboratively are described, with an emphasis on documenting rates of site loss, deterioration of specific artifacts and materials, and strategies for increasing public engagement. The articles that follow include (1) research procedures for monitoring a specific class of threatened submerged aircraft (Bush Reference Bush2024); (2) broad regional- and national-scale efforts at capacity building and public engagement, site monitoring, and research (Barker and Corns Reference Barker and Corns2024; Hambly et al. Reference Hambly, Boyd and Dawson2024; Miller et al. Reference Miller, Murray, Kemp, Lee, Simmons-Jenkins, Cochran and Gaillard2024); (3) geomorphologically based predictive modeling at fine-grained spatial and temporal scales (Cochran et al. Reference Cochran, Thompson, Anderson, Hladik and Herbert2024; Filoromo et al. Reference Filoromo, Dale and Jackson2024); (4) case studies showing how to monitor rates of erosion at specific site types to guide follow-up preservation and mitigation efforts (Gaillard et al. Reference Gaillard, Luciano, Sundin, Weber and Smith2024; Kangas et al. Reference Kangas, LeFebvre, Green, Ayers-Rigsby, Bear, De La Torre Salas and Karim2024); (5) models for developing community engagement and policy frameworks to deal with cultural resources affected by climate change that incorporate collaboration and consultation with all parties (Baram Reference Baram2024; Wright and Hylton Reference Wright and Hylton2024), and (6) a digital review documenting innovative tools that the engaged public can use to assist in managing heritage at risk (Miller Reference Miller2024). Many of these articles explore more than one of these themes, exemplifying the broad collaborative and consultative multidisciplinary effort needed when addressing climate-change impacts on cultural resources.
These articles are written by archaeologists and heritage resource managers from a range of backgrounds working in many different areas of practice. They draw on many sources but primarily come from a full-day symposium and discussion at the Society for Historical and Underwater Archaeology Conference in January 2023 held in Lisbon. They also build on a special collection of papers on heritage at risk, “Historical Archaeology's Response to the Climate Crisis,” recently published in Historical Archaeology (Miller and Wright Reference Miller and Wright2023). This issue of Advances in Archaeological Practice expands on that effort by offering specific actions, case studies, and recommendations designed to help advance and accelerate archaeological practice in coastal and near-shore areas.
Of course, many more cases studies, articles, and volumes like those presented here need to be prepared. We strongly believe that such a bottom-up, distributed, and collaborative approach, offering locally developed examples of how to proceed and generating participants and advocates from within affected communities, is an essential part of the solution to the challenges we face (e.g., Dawson et al. Reference Dawson, Hambly, Lees and Miller2021; Miller Reference Miller, Paulo A, Funari, Orser, Lawrence and Symonds2020; Silliman and Ferguson Reference Silliman, Ferguson, Ashmore, Lippert and Mills2010). Top-down strategies may also occur through the modification of existing historic preservation legislation or new governmental mandates (Altschul and Klein Reference Altschul and Klein2022; Anderson Reference Anderson2023; Rockman Reference Rockman2024; Rockman and Hritz Reference Rockman and Hritz2020), but any such broad action will need to be implemented at local scales. Essential partners in these efforts must be the directly affected parties, including Indigenous and descendant populations, who have great familiarity with and long experience in responding resiliently to changes in the landscape (Atalay Reference Atalay2012; Burke et al. Reference Burke, Peros, Wren and Boisard2021; Franklin et al. Reference Franklin, Dunnavant, Flewellen and Odewale2020). National and indeed international responses are what will be needed if we are to save important parts of the record of the human past in the unfolding crisis, but these efforts will all ultimately depend on the actions of people acting at the local to regional scales described in the articles here.
Organization of the Articles
The articles are organized into thematic groups. The first one is a research article describing procedures for examining the impacts of microbial action on submerged metals, with a focus on submerged warplanes, which have received considerably less attention than shipwrecks and other submerged site types (Bush Reference Bush2024). The next three articles focus on capacity building at regional to national scales. The first of these three, by the founders of the NAHAR group (Miller et al. Reference Miller, Murray, Kemp, Lee, Simmons-Jenkins, Cochran and Gaillard2024), illustrates how online forums offer the opportunity for collaborative action and information sharing, and promote capacity growth from the lower US Southeast to an international audience in a few short years. The next two articles showcase how multiyear, multidisciplinary site monitoring activity can occur at regional to national scales, involve large numbers of people, and generate impressive ongoing results in case studies of Wales and Ireland (Barker and Corns Reference Barker and Corns2024) and Scotland (Hambly et al. Reference Hambly, Boyd and Dawson2024).
The following two articles provide examples of predictive modeling efforts situated along the sea islands of the Georgia coast and the Mississippi River floodplain of southern Louisiana (Cochran et al. Reference Cochran, Thompson, Anderson, Hladik and Herbert2024; Filoromo et al. Reference Filoromo, Dale and Jackson2024). They illustrate why we must continually refine the ways we find and assess heritage resources and that no single approach can be effective if we are to document what is present and what will be lost and are to learn from and build on earlier work. Indeed, one lesson to be drawn is that new models will continually need to be developed and old ones refined and replaced as information improves.
The next two articles offer frameworks for monitoring landscape and site loss at small scales in specific locations or settings. Differing means of recording site loss due to sea-level rise, storm surge, and associated erosion are illustrated: one from the Pockoy Island shell ring middens on the South Carolina coast that have undergone catastrophic loss in recent years (Gaillard et al. Reference Gaillard, Luciano, Sundin, Weber and Smith2024) and the other an Archaic shell midden site on Calusa Island, Florida, which is also undergoing rapid shoreline erosion (Kangas et al. Reference Kangas, LeFebvre, Green, Ayers-Rigsby, Bear, De La Torre Salas and Karim2024). In both cases, the methods used to monitor loss evolved over time and were repeatedly evaluated for accuracy, showing that there is no one best way or practice for measuring artifact deterioration or site loss.
The last three articles offer frameworks for increasing support and conducting evaluative and mitigative measures at broad scales: they focus more on general processes than the local or regional case studies in the earlier articles. The first one offers an example from Florida of capacity building, which involves engaging and investing the public in climate responses that can be adopted widely (Baram Reference Baram2024). The second article, by Wright and Hylton (Reference Wright and Hylton2024), offers a management framework, appropriately given the acronym ADAPT, which shows step by step how to address the loss of cultural resources threatened by climate change—in conjunction with the many approaches other disciplines are also using to assess and mitigate climate impacts. Whether one chooses to adopt the specific acronym ADAPT advanced by the authors, the broad holistic framework that is advanced is an important way to think about the challenges we face moving forward. Finally, the digital review article offers examples of technical methods in use and those being developed for protecting cultural heritage at risk, with a particular emphasis on engaging the public (Miller Reference Miller2024). The threats to our common heritage are grave and broad: they require the involvement of as many people and communities as possible, and digital methods are an increasingly effective means for doing so.
Conclusion
Ongoing projects like those described here offer an excellent way to mobilize human awareness and resources to mitigate the destructive impact of the climate crisis on our heritage. Engaging with and enlisting the many publics affected, every article here demonstrates, is an essential part of the way forward. We need not only technical examples of how to document what is being lost but also, above all, to understand how to increase our capacity to conduct these kinds of studies, as well as advocate for and assist in heritage documentation, management, preservation, and, where needed, triage and mitigation. The challenges we face as a profession and as a diverse global civilization are substantial, but we have many positive ways to move forward.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank the members of the NAHAR group, who have had programs and discussion sessions most Friday mornings at 9:00 a.m. on Zoom for the past three years, for inspiring the actions of so many. To learn more, and join us, go to https://nahar.hcommons.org/. This foreword and all that follow benefited from the detailed suggestions of the editorial board of Advances and from commentary by many reviewers, all of whom deserve our thanks.
Funding Statement
This research received no specific grant funding from any funding agency, commercial, or nonprofit sectors.
Data Availability Statement
No original data are presented in this article.
Competing Interests
The authors declare that they have none.
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