Identifying climate change threats to the arctic archaeological record

Abstract

Global Climate Change and the Polar Archaeological Record; Tromsø, Norway, 15–16 February 2011; A workshop was held at the Institute of Archaeology and Social Anthropology, University of Tromsø, in Norway, to catalyze growing concern among polar archaeologists about global climate change and attendant threats to the polar archaeological and paleoecological records. Arctic archaeological sites contain an irreplaceable record of the histories of the many societies that have lived in the region over past millennia. Associated paleoecological deposits provide powerful proxy evidence for paleoclimate and ecosystem structure and function and direct evidence of species diversity, distributions, and genetic variability. Archaeological records can span most of the Holocene (the past ∼12,000 years), depending upon location, and paleoecological records extend even further. Most are largely unstudied, and, although extremely vulnerable to destruction, they are poorly monitored and not well protected. Yet these records are key to understanding how the Arctic has functioned as a system, how humans were integrated into it, and how humans may have shaped it. Such records provide a wide range of data that are not obtainable from sources such as ice and ocean cores; these data are needed for understanding the past, assessing current and projecting future conditions, and adapting to ongoing change.

Frozen Conditions: Preservation and Excavation

“…The depth of the active layer is increasing around the Arctic, which means that sites and artifacts previously in stasis are being exposed to repeated freeze-thaw cycles with longer annual opportunities for chemical and biological decay-producing processes to act (Hollesen et al 2015). In Alaska, predictions are that the active layer may reach 2 m in depth even in the northernmost part of the state by 2100 AD (Murray et al 2011).…”

Burning Libraries: A Community Response

“…In bitter irony, archaeology is also today facing unprecedented threats to its basic record, not only from the impacts of human landscape use and industrial development but from unstoppable global scale environmental impacts which will, in many areas, destroy the majority of the surviving archaeological record within a few decades (Anderson et al 2017;Ashmore 1994;Bevan and Downes 2017;Blankholm 2009;Daire et al 2012;Dawson 2013Dawson , 2016Dawson et al 2017;Elberling et al 2011;English Heritage 1997;Erlandson 2008;Ezcurra and Rivera-Collazo forthcoming;Fitzpatrick, Kappers, and Kaye 2006;Gibson 2008Gibson , 2014Harvey and Perry 2015;Hollesen et al 2012Hollesen et al , 2015Hollesen et al , 2018Ives, McBride, and Waller 2017;Jensen 2017;Jordan 1988;Lopez-Romero et al 2013;Manley et al 2007;Matthiesen et al 2014;Martens 2017;Murray, Jensen, and Rockman 2011Rockman , 2015Sweet et al 2017). This generation of archaeologists face 'burning libraries' across the globe, and all subsequent generations will judge us on our response to this threat.…”