Coastal archaeology and climate change in the Middle East and North Africa: contextualizing global projections

Westley, Kieran and Andreou, Georgia (2023) Coastal archaeology and climate change in the Middle East and North Africa: contextualizing global projections. Near Eastern Archaeology, 86 (3), 230-239. (doi:10.1086/725769).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Recent global projections of climate change highlight alarming rates of flooding and erosion on the coastlines of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Though there are indisputable links between climate change and the deterioration of maritime cultural heritage (particularly coastal archaeology), deterioration is often the result of multiple compounding factors, central among which are anthropogenic landscape alterations. In this paper we attempt to disentangle these factors at a small scale, using the Gaza Strip, Libya and Oman as case studies. We examine the impact of accelerating coastal erosion, flooding, and increasing frequency of tropical cyclones to question predominant discussions on the impact of climate change on heritage. We instead emphasize methods and practices for the identification of sites that can expand and refine climate change research (often reliant on data from the
twentieth and twenty first centuries) through the long-term perspective archaeology is uniquely placed to offer.

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Submitted date: 6 January 2023

Accepted/In Press date: 1 September 2023

Published date: 1 September 2023

Additional Information: Funding Information: This work is part of the Maritime Endangered Archaeology Project (www.marea.soton.ac.uk) funded by Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. Archaeological field-work in Libya was funded by the British Society for Libyan and North African Studies and the University of Southampton in collaboration with DoA Cyrenaica, Omar al-Mukhtar University, and Benghazi University. Fieldwork at Tell Ruqeish was funded by the Honor Frost Foundation and the University of Southampton, in collaboration with the Islamic University of Gaza and the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism. High resolution satellite images for eastern Libya and Gaza were provided by the European Space Agency. Funding Information: This work is part of the Maritime Endangered Archaeology Project (www.marea.soton.ac.uk) funded by Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. Archaeological fieldwork in Libya was funded by the British Society for Libyan and North African Studies and the University of Southampton in collaboration with DoA Cyrenaica, Omar al-Mukhtar University, and Benghazi University. Fieldwork at Tell Ruqeish was funded by the Honor Frost Foundation and the University of Southampton, in collaboration with the Islamic University of Gaza and the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism. High resolution satellite images for eastern Libya and Gaza were provided by the European Space Agency.

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