Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and Climate Change: Preserving and Learning from the Past in a Warmer Future

MICHELLE L. BERENFELD
Visiting Assistant Professor of Archaeology, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown University
 

Environmental threats, both natural and man-made, have long presented challenges to the effort to preserve and protect archaeological and cultural heritage sites. In recent years, however, it has become increasingly clear that these sites face new and growing threats posed by the effects of global climate change. Around the world, the impacts of changing weather patterns and degradation of ecosystems are already being felt by all types of cultural heritage sites, and many more lie in areas that are vulnerable to changing climate patterns—from rising sea levels to changing rainfall patterns to drought to soil erosion to increasingly severe storms. This paper presents recent findings about the impacts of global climate change on archaeological and other types of cultural heritage sites around the world. It also explores how evidence drawn from both cultural heritage management and archaeological research data may contribute to efforts to better understand and predict impacts of climate change and help preserve, protect, and sustain natural and cultural resources for the future.