FAR SIGHT: CONTRIBUTING TO RESILIENT COMMUNITIES IN THE FACE OF CLIMATE CHANGE
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2020-11-26

It is now accepted that archaeology has the potential to play a wider role within political and social agendas on climate change. In this paper we will examine the potential of responses to archaeological sites being eroded by the sea to not only contribute to wider climate change mitigation and policy, but to meet the ‘grand challenge’ or high ambition to effect behavioural change more widely. To explore this we focus on small islands’ communities, and their sustainability past and present. Small island communities and their landscape heritage can be seen as ‘canaries in the coal mine’ in regard to multi-facetted impacts of climate change; amongst other effects, for example, the Scottish Orcadian archipelago is losing a third of its archaeological heritage to coastal erosion. In the case studies touched upon (including in Easter Island and the Cook Islands), archaeologists engage intensively and in a sustained manner with communities. The inevitability of increasing erosion and the need for adaptive heritage management strategies and mitigation is confronted. Examining a range of coastal archaeology projects, we propose interdisciplinary and creative methods for engaging wider audiences and raising wider awareness of climate change through research and excavation. We also connect with ways of utilising eroding heritage research within Education for Sustainability (EfS, or LfS). While archaeology has great potential within this area, we will argue that to make a positive contribution - to EfS, climate change policy, or to behavioural change -there is a need to evaluate the contribution we make in effecting climate change literacy through our research and practice.


Author(s): Gibson, Julie (University of Highlands and Islands; Orkney Islands Council) - Downes, Jane - Mainland, Ingrid - Keir, Alison (University of Highlands and Islands)