Archaeological Sites in Small Towns—A Sustainability Assessment of Northumberland County

Abstract

Background: Land-use change, resulting from urban expansion, has led to the unprecedented importance of rethinking our interactions with the environment in general. The consequences of anthropogenic activity on natural land, as well as sustainable land use types, is a significant concern to the detriment of small towns. In this article, I assess the changes in the urban footprint morphology of Northumberland County while evaluating the consequences of urban fragmentation on archaeological sites. Northumberland has a total population of 85,598 divided into seven municipalities and the Alderville First Nation reserve. Northumberland County is a commuting distance of one hour from Toronto, one of North America’s most important economic hubs. It is of the highest importance to measure and understand the current characteristics of land-use change and its impacts on the sustainability of small towns and local communities. Methods: A total of archaeological sites are used to test the impacts of urbanization and land-use change throughout the perimeter of Northumberland county. Spatial analysis is conducted employing spatial autocorrelation techniques (global and local) to assess the existence of hotspots of archaeological sites and the potential endangerment of these sites due to urban pressure. A hexagonal topology is used to derive a regional understanding of impacted regions within the county, allowing the richness of archaeological heritage sites as well as the possible concerns of these spatial clusters to be examined. Results: It is shown that a significant number of archaeological sites are present in Northumberland county, with a clear indication of a hotspot around Rice Lake. Future urbanization as well as land-use fragmentation may have an impact on the sustainability of these archaeological sites. It is shown that hexagonal geometries may establish relevant spatial surfaces to compare urban and archaeological sites as criteria to understand the endangerment of archaeological sites. The availability of the Global Urban Footprint (GUF) creates a particularly rigorous framework for the detection of impact on archaeological sites. Conclusion: The findings suggest that archaeological sites in small towns can benefit from high-resolution urban land-use footprints to detect impacts on archaeological sites and the relations of land-use change and intrasite management. This is of utmost importance in times of significant anthropogenic change brought by increasing urban pressure on small and medium-sized towns.

Data Analysis of Land Use Change and Urban and Rural Impacts in Lagos State, Nigeria

“…Urbanization does not only deal with land-use change but also with lifestyle changes that concern rural-urban relationships in agriculture [16]. Similarly, the expansion of urban areas and continued sprawl is negatively affecting our environment and natural rural landscapes [17][18][19]. Subsequently, this can lead to contamination of soil, water, and air [20] and greenhouse gas emissions in urban-rural environments [21].…”

Multi-Temporal Change Detection Analysis of Vertical Sprawl over Limassol City Centre and Amathus Archaeological Site in Cyprus during 2015–2020 Using the Sentinel-1 Sensor and the Google Earth Engine Platform

“…Cultural heritage monuments and landscapes are threatened by various anthropogenic and natural hazards [ 1 , 2 , 3 ], including urbanization. Despite the urbanisation process being considered a relatively slow process compared to earthquakes and other hazard events that can have an immediate impact on cultural heritage sites, several studies indicated that urban sprawl can similarly impact the archaeological record of an area in the long term [ 4 , 5 ]. In addition, as [ 6 ] argue, new global challenges are expected in terms of balancing cultural heritage conservation and addressing the requirements of the urbanization process.…”

The application of Local Indicators for Categorical Data (LICD) to explore spatial dependence in archaeological spaces

“…Assessing a degree of spatial association is particularly critical in archaeological research, as it might reveal complex social, cultural or depositional processes underlying spatial data patterning. Autocorrelation analysis has been commonplace in archaeological research since the early days of GIS (Kvamme, 1990), and different significance tests are now routinely applied in various archaeological projects at intra-site and inter-site (or landscape) scale (Carrer, 2017;Vaz, 2020).…”