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Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites Volume 20, 2018 - Issue 4: Our Libraries Are Burning! Climate Change Impacts on Archaeology and Heritage. Guest Editor: Ruth Maher
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Introductions

Burning Libraries: A Community Response

Thomas H. McGovernAnthropology Department, Hunter College CUNY, CUNY Doctoral Center, New York, USACorrespondence[email protected]
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Pages 165-174 | Published online: 03 Dec 2018

ABSTRACT

The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen a growing recognition that widespread impacts of climate change (erosion, sea level rise, wildfires, warming soil temperatures) are rapidly destroying archaeological sites and permanently wiping out millennia of cultural heritage and important scientific data on a global scale. This paper provides a brief overview of the efforts of the international archaeological community and its allies to organise a broad and coordinated response to this widespread and urgent threat to our basic record by mobilising at the local, national and international level. The work of the archaeological professional societies has supplemented a growing host of initiatives on multiple scales by national and local governmental agencies, regional research teams, local and Indigenous heritage groups and the international global change scientific community. This paper provides some reflections on the Society for American Archaeology’s Climate Change Strategies and the Archaeological Record team effort from 2015 to 2018, some links to more contacts and resources and some suggestions for future directions.

The Threat: Our Libraries Are Burning

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, archaeologists have increasingly sought to use their data and long-term perspectives on human ecodynamics on the century to millennial scale to contribute to modern efforts to achieve societal resilience and sustainable resource use in a world affected by accelerating climate change (Dugmore et al. Citation2013; Jackson, Dugmore, and Reide Citation2017; Fitzhugh et al. Citation2018; Hicks et al. Citation2017; Isendahl and Stump Citation2017; Sandweiss and Kelley Citation2012). Planners, scenario builders and resource managers have increasingly recognised the value of the longue durée in managing the present for the future (Braje Citation2010; Englehard et al. Citation2015; Hudson et al. Citation2012). The conceptual tool kit of Historical Ecology has now spread across multiple disciplines and represents a major force in applied archaeology and trans-disciplinary consilience approaches (Armstrong et al. Citation2017; Moss et al. Citation2006; Nelson et al. Citation2016; Haldon et al. Citation2018; Riede Citation2017; Schwindt et al. Citation2016; West Citation2009). New analytic tools (including ancient DNA, stable isotopes, trace element analysis) combined with ‘big data’ sets accumulated through decades of fieldwork allowing for large scale integrative modelling and synthesis all have combined in the first decades of this century to provide archaeology with unprecedented capacity to engage with grand challenges with direct relevance to the future of our species and planet (Altschul et al Citation2017; Kintigh et al. Citation2014a, Citation2014b). As several have noted, we have multiple ‘libraries of Alexandria’ opening across the globe in what has been described as a ‘global observing network of the past’ (CitationHambrecht et al. forthcoming).

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. Citation2017; Ashmore Citation1994; Bevan and Downes Citation2017; Blankholm Citation2009; Daire et al. Citation2012; Dawson Citation2013, Citation2016; Dawson et al. Citation2017; Elberling et al. Citation2011; English Heritage Citation1997; Erlandson Citation2008; CitationEzcurra and Rivera-Collazo forthcoming; Fitzpatrick, Kappers, and Kaye Citation2006; Gibson Citation2008, Citation2014; Harvey and Perry Citation2015; Hollesen et al. Citation2012, Citation2015, Citation2018; Ives, McBride, and Waller Citation2017; Jensen Citation2017; Jordan Citation1988; Lopez-Romero et al. Citation2013; Manley et al. Citation2007; Matthiesen et al. Citation2014; Martens Citation2017; Murray, Jensen, and Friesen Citation2011; Reckin Citation2013; Reeder, Rick, and Erlandson Citation2012; Reeder-Myers Citation2015; Rick and Fitzpatrick Citation2012; Rivera-Collazo and Ezcurra Citation2017; Rivera-Collazo Citation2018; Rivera-Collazo Rodriguez-Franco, and Garay-Vazquez Citation2018; Rockman Citation2011, Citation2015; Sweet et al. Citation2017). This generation of archaeologists face ‘burning libraries’ across the globe, and all subsequent generations will judge us on our response to this threat. The need for collective action, pooling of resources, ideas and funding support has never been more urgent.

Organisational Responses

Responding to widespread concerns and growing local-level response efforts, in 2015 the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) expanded a task force investigating potential responses led by Dan Sandweiss (University of Maine at Orono) into the Climate Change Strategies and the Archaeological Record Committee (chaired by Dan Sandweiss and Tom McGovern, now chaired by Anne Jensen UIC). The CCSAR Committee has sponsored three successive ‘Burning Libraries’ sessions (and multiple paper presentations in other sessions and three special SAA Presidential Forum panels) at the 2016 Orlando meeting, the 2017 Vancouver meeting (where many of the papers in this volume were presented) and the 2018 Washington DC meeting just completed. The SAA CCSAR committee continues to expand and prosper, and benefits from a very engaged, high-energy membership and team of international allies and collaborators (McGovern Citation2016, Citation2017, Citation2018). This set of papers is one product of this committee, and forms part of a growing set of peer-reviewed publications centred on climate change impacts and community response (Anderson et al. Citation2017; Dawson et al. Citation2017; Hambrecht and Rockman Citation2017; Hollesen et al. Citation2018).

Also in 2015 the Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE) group began its Global Environmental Threats to Heritage and the Long Term Observing Networks of the Past hub (http://ihopenet.org/global-environmental-change-threats-to-heritage-and-long-term-observing-networks-of-the-pas/). This international forum has provided excellent opportunities for sharing expertise and building best-practice connections internationally, in connecting government agency initiatives to local communities and self-organising local response groups, and aiding graduate student participation in meetings and workshops facilitated by an National Science Foundation research coordination network grant 2012–2016 from the NSF Arctic Social Sciences Program.

The European Archaeology Association (EAA) has also been increasingly active in climate change response, with a key session at the 2015 Glasgow meeting providing links between European and North American teams and producing an important edited volume (Dawson et al. Citation2017). The EAA 2016 Vilnius meeting launched a climate working group that has since expanded to community status in EAA. In 2017, the EAA Maastricht meeting featured three climate themed sessions (all well attended) and a very productive high-level roundtable organised by Peter Biehl, Vibeke Martens, and Felix Riede. Keynote speakers included Felipe Criado-Boado (EAA), Susan Chandler (SAA), Koji Mizoguchi (WAC), Ben Thomas (AIA), Thomas McGovern (SAA-CCSAR), Tom Dawson (Scotland’s Coastal Heritage at Risk), Marcy Rockman (USNPS) and Michel Vorenhout (archaeomonitoring.nl).

The Society for Historical Archaeology established a Heritage at Risk Committee (HARC) at the 2017 mid-year meeting led by Sarah Miller of the Florida Public Archaeology Network. The Committee’s tasks are to coordinate with other groups monitoring the effects of sea level rise and other climate change actions on heritage resources; to share information about affected historical archaeological sites with these groups; and to communicate climate change studies, heritage documentation and protection efforts to SHA members.

Archaeological professional organisations have now stepped up their formal participation in climate change impacts work and are forging strong international networks to connect communities and disciplines, spread best practice approaches, and work to increase funding support for urgent rescue and curation efforts. Many national and regional cultural resource and heritage management groups have developed excellent programs for climate impact response, and a sampling of these are provided below (national and regional programs). The international archaeological community is engaging with stakeholders and the global public about the threats to heritage and science and has become increasingly effective in getting the message out through a wide range of media (see the media resources listing below). There is much to be done, but some important progress has been made in the past few years.

Some Milestones

In the past five years, a remarkable outpouring of energy and enthusiasm has begun to engage with the threats posed by our burning libraries, and the papers in this collection provide some excellent illustrations of these initiatives. Some additional cooperative milestones can also be flagged up as well:

  • Arctic Horizons Visioning Process: In 2016–2017 the United States National Science Foundation funded a major re-visioning process for the Arctic Social Sciences Program (Anna Kerttula, program officer) that involved multiple meetings with a wide range of stakeholders and resulted in a major community-based report that is now available online (http://www.arctichorizons.org/). Several CCSAR members participated in the process, and there was strong synergy across disciplines and (especially) between Indigenous scholars, academics and practitioners. One major theme that emerged was the ‘burning libraries’ issue, and threats to heritage and science were major concerns at all the workshops and breakout sessions. This report will help guide the NSF Arctic Social Sciences program, which will have a major future role in climate impact response.

  • USGCRP (United States Global Change Research Program) held a three-day workshop ‘Social Science Perspectives on Climate Change’, hosted by NASA HQ in Washington, DC. This workshop was a collaboration between US Global Change Research Program, US federal scientists/planners from 13 agencies, and academic social scientists and professional associations of four disciplines (anthropology, archaeology, geography and sociology). The main objective was to shed more light on the four disciplines that have been under-represented in the federal research programs and past climate assessments. The SAA CCSAR team was represented by Marcy Rockman, George Hambrecht, Torben Rick, Tim Kohler, Isabel Rivera-Collazo, Peter Biehl and Tom McGovern (with major help from Carrie Hritz). McGovern presented the SAA archaeology overview (with fine help from the rest of the team) and all have participated in creating a joint three-themed white paper now available online (https://www.globalchange.gov/content/social-science-perspectives-climate-change-workshop; Biehl et al. Citation2018; Fisk et al. Citation2018; Hardy et al. Citation2018). Tim Kohler (Washington State University) and Jia Li (Environmental Protection Agency) are leading the effort to bring these out as a special issue of WIREs Climate Change in 2018.

  • USNPS Cultural Resources Climate Change Strategy: The United States National Park Service plan NPS Cultural Resources Climate Change Strategy (lead authored by Marcy Rockman) was released 6 January 2017 as an online download (https://www.nps.gov/subjects/climatechange/upload/NPS-2016_Cultural-Resoures-Climate-Change-Strategy.pdf). Between 25 and 27 January 2017 the NPS Strategy went viral, becoming the most downloaded federal document for three days. Multiple courses in environment and archaeology now use this document as a supplementary text book and it has become a recognised international standard. On 18 October 2017 the World Heritage program expert meeting on Climate Change and Heritage embraced the NPS Strategy document.

Changing Business as Usual?

During meeting and workshop discussions it has become clear that some things we need to do as a community of archaeologists are things we are already attempting:

  • Expand digital documentation in the field, using technology to dig faster and smarter, create lasting 3D imagery of standing structures and ruins that cannot be saved, creating community-based frameworks for prioritising site rescue (organic preservation, uniqueness, heritage values, etc.);

  • Expand engagement with digital media and place-based education initiatives to make the threat to heritage and science a ‘teachable moment’ which will raise the profile of archaeology in primary and secondary schools and build public support for response actions;

  • Improve digital archiving resources and contribute to initiatives like DINAA (Digital Index of North American Archaeology) which will become critical planning and prioritisation tools.

We are also realising that the archaeological community needs to rethink some of its long-held assumptions about good practice and responsible professional activities, as our current ‘business as usual’ approaches are increasingly inappropriate:

  • In situ preservation of archaeological sites is increasingly impractical. Rapid soil warming in South Greenland has already caused the near complete loss of organic preservation of over 90% of the once incredibly rich Norse midden deposits (Hollesen et al. Citation2015, Citation2018). Bones excavated in the 1930s now on museum shelves in Copenhagen remain in excellent condition, but bones left in the ground on the same sites are now unrecoverable mush. As a discipline we must realise that a minimal disturbance, in situ preservation strategy is no longer viable in many areas.

  • Ex situ conservation of collections and data by large scale excavation will generate analytic backlogs. These are not sinful, permit endangering, ‘bad archaeologist’ backlogs, but must be understood as positive and desired outcomes of large-scale rescue work. Good archaeologists must now deliberately create backlogs, or the future will have nothing to study.

  • Doctoral theses for the future: we must recognise that we will be creating analytical resources that will generate PhD and MA theses for students not yet born. This will require not only new attitudes towards backlogs, but also careful strategies for long-term curation and effective digital stewardship of the site records that will make sense of collections for future analysts. The Digital Antiquity teams and related digital data management initiatives already becoming active will play a vital role in making this work and need commensurate funding support.

  • Large scale, sustained funding for a coordinated international effort will be needed for at least a decade of intense rescue work, and for multiple decades of curation and post-excavation analyses. We need to approach private and institutional donors as well as the usual research-based funding agencies and build public and donor support for our mission. This will require commitment on the scale generated by the international geophysical community in the successful effort to emergency core multiple mid-latitude ice sheets (some now melted) and to retain the ice cores for long-term future study. We have allies in the natural science community, and we should make use of our increasing visibility as contributors to global change science to gain widespread support for a serious, sustained effort.

Media Resources

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas H. McGovern

Thomas H. McGovern is Professor and Director of the Zooarchaeology Laboratory, Anthropology Department, Hunter College. He is Coordinator of the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) and Associate Director of the CUNY Human Ecodynamics Research Center (HERC).

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