From Smithsonian, another worrisome maybe, could be, sea level rise story. At least they said “Should global warming cause sea levels to rise”.
Scientists issue call to action for archaeological sites threatened by rising seas
Should global warming cause sea levels to rise as predicted in coming decades, thousands of archaeological sites in coastal areas around the world will be lost to erosion. With no hope of saving all of these sites, archaeologists Torben Rick from the Smithsonian Institution, Leslie Reeder of Southern Methodist University, and Jon Erlandson of the University of Oregon have issued a call to action for scientists to assess the sites most at risk.
Santa Barbara Channel
Caption: This is a map of the Santa Barbara Channel Study area.
Credit: Leslie Reeder
Writing in the Journal of Coastal Conservation and using California’s Santa Barbara Channel as a case study, the researchers illustrate how quantifiable factors such as historical rates of shoreline change, wave action, coastal slope and shoreline geomorphology can be used to develop a scientifically sound way of measuring the vulnerability of individual archaeological sites. They then propose developing an index of the sites most at risk so informed decisions can be made about how to preserve or salvage them.
Urban development, the researchers point out, also is a significant threat to the loss of archaeological data. Coastlines have long been magnets of human settlement and contain a rich array of ancient archaeological sites, many of which have never been excavated. Urban development is projected to remain high in coastal areas, representing a significant danger to undisturbed sites.
Thousands of archaeological sites—from large villages and workshops to fragmented shell middens and lithic scatters—are perched on the shorelines and sea cliffs of the Santa Barbara Channel, the researchers point out. The archaeological record is never static, and the materials left behind by one generation are altered by the people and environment of the next. However, increasing threats from modern urban development, sea level rise and global warming are poised to increase this steady pattern of alteration and destruction.
Santa Barbara Archaeological Sites
Caption: These are archaeological sites coded according to a Cultural Resource Vulnerability Index.
Credit: Leslie Reeder
The vulnerability of sites in the Santa Barbara Channel is generally lower than sites located along more open, more gently sloped or unstable coastlines, such as the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of North America.
Measuring threats and identifying vulnerable sites is not an end in itself, the researchers say. “We must find ways to act…by quantifying those sites most vulnerable to destruction, we take a first step toward mitigating the loss of archaeological data and the shared cultural patrimony they contain.”
Norm in Calgary says:
October 28, 2010 at 9:07 pm
“Great, now Archaeologists want a cut of the Global Warming pie.”
Yup. They’re late to the party, there’s not much pie left, and everyone else will be trying to get at the crumbs.
OT, but, as if the prospects for the coming winter weren’t bad enough already,now comes news that two volcanoes on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula are spewing big ash clouds
http://ap.stripes.com/dynamic/stories/E/EU_RUSSIA_VOLCANOES?SITE=DCSAS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2010-10-28-18-42-49
mods;
The link in my previous post is an AP story. There may be copyright issues with posting it here. Not up on their rules myself, but if you think it could be an issue, it may be best to delete it.
There are hundreds of archaeological sites all over the world that are already under water. We need action NOW!
[REPLY – I warned the Helicaeans not to sign that mortgage! ~ Evan
The rate of sea level rise is really going down for the moment, and has been for the last years:
http://ecotretas.blogspot.com/2010/10/going-down.html
Don’t be confused though: the sea level is still going up, but instead of accelerating, like the fearmongers of Global Warming tend to tell, it is rising at a much smaller pace, not much bigger than all of the 20th century .
Ecotretas
So they know there needs to be “action”, but haven’t worked out yet what that might be. Someone wake me up when they’ve worked it out, because that alone could be worth hearing, at least for a laugh..
There are probably a lot of archaeological sites that have already been covered with some couple of hundred feet of water. Bet there’s a bunch of the under water between the US and Russia … and between Italy and Greece.
I’ll bet that during the last ice age, the Adriatic sea was a rather fertile valley with the Po river running through it. An entire culture probably lost their tribal lands when the ice age ended and flooded it.
Happens all the time.
Speaking as an archaeologist I’m going to say just this. Coastlines change all the time. It’s down to processes like isostacy, erosion and, depending on where you live, plate tectonics. Post glacial inundation ended thousands of years ago and took a lot of our archaeology with it. Occasionally we get to reclaim some of it (Doggerland Project). I have seen sites in danger of, or being lost to the sea through natural processes. However, I have yet to view a site threatened by the storm surge of man made global freaking warming. Urbanistation is a far greater threat to our buried heritage. I think those Californiologists need to remove themselves from the alarmist payroll.
P G Sharrow is right on target. As a resident of the Santa Barbara Channel shore and a former participant in several archaeological digs in the area, I can verify that there is little likelihood of future finds any different from what has been found in multitudes during past digs. The artifacts and other evidence from campsites and shell middens represent very basic cultures that exploited their available resources no differently than any other cultures of the past. The only value of these sites is for facilitating the efforts of graduate students in obtaining their advanced degrees in archaeology, by pretending that each has some special kind of significance, which they really do not. The discipline is better served by investigation of more interesting and important sites. Also, as others have mentioned, current underwater archaeological techniques are sufficient to examine any that might eventually be lost to land surface exploration.
Does it really matter! Museums basements all over the world are stuffed with bits of pot, bones, tiles etc. which few people ever see or, are ever examined. Archeology is an industry and its pursuit adds little to anything which is useful to modern society.
The main beneficiaries are the archaeologists whose careers are funded by grants.
Other than giving the overly educated and their groupies busy work, what do we really learn from such sites? How they wove baskets and made pots? What they ate?
Do we not have enough challenges in this world, to keep these people busy with the living, instead of the dead and long-long gone?
Modern societies are so many interested in killing the living and ‘resurrecting’ the dead, it is silly.
Want to really twist some brains? Propose a project to lower sea level, by pumping huge amounts of sea water into Death Valley and the Dead Sea AND only allowing the water to leave through evaporation. There would be soooo many groups up in arms (well, virtual arms) over it… we could dedicate a cable TV channel to it their committees and watching it snow on their AGW protests! 🙂
Norm in Calgary and Jimmy Haigh:
“Great, now Archaeologists want a cut of the Global Warming pie.”
I’ve never understood why archaeologists and historians weren’t up in arms the minute the hockey stick appeared, since they’re the ones who would be familiar with the large amounts of evidence that the Roman and Mediaeval Warm Periods existed.
Last time we lost Atlantis but at least we found a lost city 120 feet down in the Bay of Cambay. Have we learnt nothing from the anthropogenic carbon excesses of our ancestors?
Well they haven’t much time to get their act together. It could rise by two or three centimetres in the next 50 or 100 years so they need to get that funding rolling in ASAP. But seriously, In a world where a sharp breeze can create waves of two metres high or more, who are they trying to kid?
Uhmkey so essentially the sea level rise of the last 8000 years that has flooded numerous thousands of now archeological sites is ok but the one inch rise in the comming century is bad even though it’s natural as well.
Supposedly archeological site get flooded because humans have always been strangely anal about living by the sea for some bogus reason or another. Trading, Fishing, pfft. :p
DaveF says:
“I’ve never understood why archaeologists and historians weren’t up in arms the minute the hockey stick appeared, since they’re the ones who would be familiar with the large amounts of evidence that the Roman and Mediaeval Warm Periods existed.”
There were plenty of objections, but they were drowned out by the shouting and panic over global warming. Tonyb has written some excellent articles on climate history and its effect on civilization, and the late, great John Daly pounced on Mann’s ridiculous hockey stick from the beginning. Here is one of his many articles on the subject.
The UK City of Portsmouth, home to what is left of the Royal Navy (an aircraft carrier with no planes) is an island a few feet above sea level, with hundreds of years of history and archaeology.
Why aren’t residents running around like headless chickens, they are all doomed
Smokey 3:16 am:
Thanks for that, Smokey, I’ll follow that up. Meanwhile, here in the uk Channel 4’s Time Team TV series, which is chock full of archaeologists and historians dutifully pushes the AGW line. Curious. Dave.
I noticed while gazing there that my naval was at risk of being over run by lint – a global catastrophe of alarming proportions…
I think that I have simply had enough of being told that I need to be a frightened little bunny trapped in the headlights and waiting to be saved by government.
Coastal areas erode all the time. Get over it for Gawds sake!
Dave.
But I thought Obama was to stop the sea levele from rising?
Dennis Nikols, P. Geol says:
October 28, 2010 at 10:34 pm (Edit)
I think the most telling point being made is not so much about rising sea levels but the other human caused problems that need mitigation. The developing of an index like this is useful and potentially valuable. The major problem they face is a one of setting a value of these places. Just because it is important to some archeologist does not mean it have any value to anyone else. This like much else in society and almost everything having to do with a changing climate or changing society, has different values to different people for almost always different reasons.
There is a common system to assigning value to multiple objectives and across multiple disciplines and – even – across long periods of time.
It’s called dollars, investments, and funding. But these self-centered ones cannot stand by their own merits annd debate openly the worth of their own interest in these low-lying (potential) sites that (potentially) might hold (potential) worth. So they exaggerate the extent, immediacy, and urgency of the “dangers” to these sites to artificially create a crisis in order that they can manipulate that crisis and publicity around that crisis.
These “alarmist archeologists” are merely exploiting today’s socialist/liberal/extremist/easily-excitable/gullible politicians to create an artificial demand for their particular services by law and by seizure (of land, sites, and funding) from others rather than by honest bargaining and open planning. But by manipulating certain members of the ruling class, they can get their way imposed on the rest of the world. And feel better about themselves.
I wonder if AL’s new seaside house is on the list of endangered sites.
Hmmmm….Given that much of California (esp. the area discussed here) is an accretion of island arcs that continue to move, isn’t this an utterly stupid argument? Earth is moving these bodies of land horizontally–and vertically as well–and likely at a pace that makes any hypothetical sea level rise irrelevant.
“But we must keep EVERYTHING exactly as it is right now, otherwise it’s the END OF THE WORLD!!!” sayeth the AGW crowd.
Oh please. Shut up and get back to work.
Lay one row of cement blocks…..
…..there, now you’re good for another 100 years