AMBIGUOUS LANGUAGE AND DIFFICULT DECISIONS
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 28/12/2020

For archaeologists managing fragile coastlines around Western Europe, the early warning signs of sea level rise, and the impacts of increasing storminess have been visible for nearly three decades. During this time, we have accumulated more and more research evidence about the impact of these changes on the historic environment, and moved towards incorporating this evidence into our projections for the future, and into the management decisions we make about the coastal historic environment.

Working from this background, and using case studies from the Outer Hebrides in Scotland, this paper argues that the language we have used to assess the impacts of climate change is having an effect on both public and professional expectations of outcomes for the sites, and therefore upon our management decisions. In using language of ‘risk’, we hold out the possibility that it may be possible to mitigate risk, and save sites. We thus avoid difficult discussions about how to make decisions about the futures of the sites, and have delayed in seriously addressing the inevitable loss of important archaeological evidence. As time progresses, resources for this work will become much more constrained. Some alternative approaches are proposed, to address the difficult and unavoidable decisions we must make.


Author(s): MacLeod Rivett, Mary (HES Historic Environment Scotland)