Practical approaches to management of the marine prehistoric environment

Abstract

Since so little is still known of the marine prehistoric environment, present management actions tend to be guided by the gathering of disparate sets of data obtained as part of regulatory practice and/or from opportunistic finds that are not necessarily specifically targeted towards archaeology. Our view is that we need to develop a clearly defined set of questions about the marine prehistoric cultural resource to enable the design of targeted scientific research, as part of both the regulatory process and marine management generally. In this paper we argue that it is crucial to understand both natural and anthropogenic context, and this necessarily includes work on the Quaternary geology. Furthermore, we argue for a greater regulatory emphasis on identifying and initiating what weshoulddo (for the long term) rather than what wecanand are doing (for the short term) to identify the best means to manage the prehistoric marine environment.

‘Out of sight, out of mind’ - towards a greater acknowledgment of submerged prehistoric resources in Australian science-policy as part of a common heritage

“…Claims that the Cape Bruguieres site represents the first in situ submerged archaeological site in Australia (Benjamin et al, 2020) have unfortunately not stood up to scientific scrutiny, with the site almost certainly representing a secondary (i.e., reworked) and ponded artefact scatter, i.e., artefacts accumulated in ponded water above lowest tide level (Ward et al, 2022b). This reanalysis emphasizes the importance of understanding the evolution of the physical seascape and of past and present physical processes to interpreting site formation (Ward et al, 2014;Ward et al, 2015;Larcombe et al 2018) and not emphasizing the significance of a site for merely being under water (Lemke 2020). Arguments that this discovery has helped highlight the lack of awareness of submerged cultural heritage in Australia are less valid when the credibility of the science and the understandings are questioned, and further erodes science as an arbiter of good policy in cultural resource management.…”

“…All archaeological material in such landscapes is considered rare and to have a high level of significance (Tutchener et al, 2021) but the presence of tangible cultural material is not necessarily a criterion for significance and the presence of oral histories needs to be regarded as adequate evidence of that significance (see also McNiven, 2003). These criteria overlap with those used for geoheritage significance, with archaeology and cultural heritage linked by sedimentary units that comprise these landforms (Brocx and Semeniuk, 2007;Brocx, 2008;Ward et al, 2014) both in terrestrial and marine contexts.…”

A New Model for Coastal Resource Productivity and Sea‐Level Change: The Role of Physical Sedimentary Processes in Assessing the Archaeological Potential of Submerged Landscapes from the Northwest Australian Continental Shelf

“…Around the world there is rapidly increasing recognition of submerged archaeological sites and landscapes, and of their potential for research (Gagliano et al., ; Flemming, ,b; Bailey et al., ; Benjamin et al., ; Bailey, Sakellariou, & members of the SPLASHCOS network, ). Further, researchers are beginning to explicitly include past and present physical processes as part of this study of submerged landscapes (Scourse & Austin, ; Ward & Larcombe, ; Dix, Lambkin, & Rangecroft, ; Ward, Larcombe, & Mulvaney, ) and are recognizing that understanding and accounting for such processes it is important in developing conceptual models of the human use of now‐drowned landscapes and of subsequent site preservation (Cohen et al., ; Ward et al., ).…”

Introduction to North Sea submerged landscapes and prehistory

“…One paper addresses aspects of practical approaches to the management of the marine prehistoric environment, a subject that is perhaps not naturally expected in this journal. However, as Ward et al (2014) state, there is a 'need to develop a clearly defined set of questions about the marine prehistoric resource, with which more targeted scientific research can be designed, both as part of the regulatory process and of marine management generally '. Indeed, in order to do so it is necessary to understand natural and anthropogenic contexts and their interrelationships.…”

“…On the other hand there is much to gain from increased and optimised data integration across national borders. The gain can be high: not only will this allow for a better spatial coverage of, for example, models of archaeological potential (see Ward et al, 2014), it will also help to optimise future data collection.…”