Climate change is threatening an uncalculated number of archaeological sites globally, totaling perhaps hundreds of thousands of culturally and paleoenvironmentally significant resources. As with all archaeological sites, they provide evidence of humanity’s past and help us understand our place in the present world. Coastal sites, clustered at the water’s edge, are already experiencing some of the most dramatic damage due to anthropogenic climate change, and the situation is predicted to worsen in the future. In the face of catastrophic loss, organizations around the world are developing new ways of working with this threatened coastal resource. This paper uses three examples from Scotland, Florida, and Maine to highlight how new partnerships and citizen science approaches are building communities of practice to better manage threatened coastal heritage. It compares methods on either side of the Atlantic and highlights challenges and solutions. The approaches are applicable to the increasing number of heritage sites everywhere at risk from climate change; the study of coastal sites thus helps society prepare for climate change impacts to heritage worldwide.
This paper describes the excavation, discoveries relating to the hull, machinery, and artefacts, and the history of an early steamboat wreck discovered in the Red River between Oklahoma and Texas. The wreck has been identified as the side-wheel steamer Heroine, a vessel in service on the Mississippi, Ohio, and other western rivers of North America during the 1830s. It is the earliest example of this famous type of vessel yet studied.
Created by the Florida Legislature in 2004, the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN) has grown into a positive force for preservation, public engagement, and community collaboration in archaeology. This article discusses the genesis of FPAN and how the organization has changed in scope, evolved in mission, and addressed challenges, ideally providing ideas and direction for similar programmes in other locations.
Objective
This article seeks to reframe so‐called Confederate monuments as monuments to the revisionist “Lost Cause.” I define these monuments as a problem for historic preservation that has long been based on a preference for in‐place protection of things “historic.”
Methods
I compare Confederate monuments’ original intent with arguments that these are Civil War, soldier, or veteran memorials. I also explore monuments’ value as sculpture and their de facto status as nationally significant and worthy of preservation.
Results
Confederate monuments are monuments to the Lost Cause, a narrative supporting the resurgence of white supremacy. We must reconsider the in‐place preservation of these monuments as a de facto choice of historic preservation.
Conclusion
The structural problem of Confederate monuments for our national historic preservation program calls for its broader evaluation for inclusivity and racial justice. We must find other ways to tell the history of the Confederacy than through physical propaganda pieces of the failed national insurrection of the 1860s.
Over the past several years, we have seen many attacks on publicly funded and mandated archaeology in the United States. These attacks occur at the state level, where governors and state legislatures try to defund or outright eliminate state archaeological programs and institutions. We have also seen several attacks at the federal level. Some members of Congress showcase archaeology as a waste of public tax dollars, and others propose legislation to move federally funded or permitted projects forward without consideration of impacts on archaeological resources. These attacks continue to occur, and we expect them to increase in the future. In the past, a vigilant network of historic preservation and archaeological organizations was able to thwart such attacks. The public, however, largely remains an untapped ally. As a discipline, we have not built a strong public support network. We have not demonstrated the value of archaeology to the public, beyond a scattering of educational and informational programs. In this article, we—a group of archaeologists whose work has focused on public engagement—provide a number of specific recommendations on how to build a strong public constituency for the preservation of our nation's archaeological heritage.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.