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Half Pint: Climate Change and Historic Landscapes with Isabel Cook - Ep 33
621 Plays4 years ago
Archaeology and Ale is a monthly series of talks presented by Archaeology in the City, part of the University of Sheffield Archaeology Department’s outreach programme. Half Pint is a short interview-style format which we will be undertaking during the COVID-19 lockdown. In this first Half Pint interview, we welcome Dr Isabel Cook speaking about the impact of current and future climate change on historic landscapes. Isabel has recently completed her PhD at the University of Sheffield's Department of Archaeology. Her research was on the impacts of climate change on archaeological landscapes and focused on the west coast of Wales. In this episode, Isabel takes us through the design and execution of her work and tells us about how climate change has affected these landscapes and how we can help to mitigate these effects. For more information on Isabel's research please follow the links below.
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-26/britain-s-cherished-landmarks-under-threat-from-climate-change
- https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/archaeology-heritage-climate-change-uk-britain-impact-effects-weather-1.866334
- https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/study-shows-our-historical-landscape-under-threat-climate-change-1343903
- https://www.energylivenews.com/2019/09/27/uks-historic-landscapes-risk-being-severely-damaged-by-changing-climate/
For more information about Archaeology in the City’s events and opportunities to get involved, please email [email protected] or visit our website at archinthecity.wordpress.com. You can also find us on Twitter (@archinthecity), Instagram (@archaeointhecity), or Facebook (@archinthecity)
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Sponsorship and Affiliations
00:00:28
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Episode 33 of the Archaeology in Ale podcast and this segment of Halfpint. The podcast is brought to you by Archaeology in the City, the community outreach program from the University of Sheffield's Department of Archaeology.
Introducing Dr. Isabel Cook
00:00:42
Speaker
In this Halfpint, we welcome Dr. Isabel Cook, telling us about climate change and historical landscapes.
00:00:58
Speaker
Recently I've graduated from the University of Sheffield after undertaking a PhD that I did there looking at the impact of current and future climate change on archaeology, specifically historic landscapes and how those impacts could be sustainably managed.
00:01:14
Speaker
So I focused on a study area on the west coast of Wales. It was a really beautiful area of Snowdonia and I was lucky enough to visit several times for fieldwork, which was a real highlight for me of my PhD experience. I did have some archaeological experience before my PhD, for instance, from excavations during my undergraduate degree when I was 17.
00:01:36
Speaker
But to be honest, when I started, I was really lacking some of the kind of archaeological knowledge and skills. I started my PhD because my Masters was in climate change. So I kind of felt like I had to go to a few of the Masters courses so I could kind of actually understand what I was supposed to be talking about.
00:01:54
Speaker
But yeah, currently I'm working as a Research and Projects Officer for Change Agents UK, which is a sustainability charity, which works with organizations and facilitates sustainability related projects. And I'm also applying to be a secondary geography teacher at the moment, so.
Dr. Cook's Academic Journey
00:02:16
Speaker
Considering your background education, what made you want to switch to archaeology and what inspired your PhD project?
00:02:24
Speaker
Well, I did my I was always really interested in archaeology so I actually for my undergraduate degree started doing archaeology and it kind of You know, it was just just archaeology But then I realized that I thought I wanted to be a geography teacher So changed to joint honors, so I was doing half geography half archaeology and
00:02:47
Speaker
And so I did my undergraduate dissertation on the potential impacts of future sea level rise on archaeological sites. And because I found, or I kind of still wanted to be a teacher, I found the climate change stuff that I'd learned about so interesting. So I went on to do a masters in climate change and environmental policy. And because I thought I was really keen to pursue that in terms of either research or if I didn't want to go into teaching maybe as a career.
Framework for Assessing Climate Impact
00:03:16
Speaker
But then when I was doing my masters, although it was super interesting, I found it really striking that there was a real lack of any mention of cultural heritage, in particular material cultural heritage. So often things like indigenous cultures were mentioned or indigenous ways of life, they're mentioned in reference to the impact of climate change on them.
00:03:37
Speaker
But when discussing things like the countryside or rural areas, the only discourse was kind of about ecology or sometimes at a push economy in terms of the agricultural economy. But there was really nothing about archaeological sites or remains or anything like that. And I think coming from
00:03:56
Speaker
previously having studied archaeology I thought kind of like hold on a minute you know why isn't one talking about this so I felt like there's a big gap there that I wanted to kind of pursue so that's kind of why I went went into the PhD in
Research Tools and Applications
00:04:13
Speaker
and kind of wanted to bring my climate change knowledge that I got from my masters, but apply it to archaeology, which I didn't feel like was being done all that much. And tell us more about your project. What were its goals and what methods did you use to answer your research questions? Yeah, absolutely.
00:04:31
Speaker
After many different plans and iterations and proposals that changed hugely, the main goal of my PhD eventually was to create a framework that could be used to assess the vulnerability of historic landscapes and the features within them to climate change based on a range of criteria such as the nature of the archaeological remains, the soil type, slope steepness, rates of coastal erosion and sea level rise,
00:04:59
Speaker
and projected changes to precipitation and temperature, and many other things. And so this framework could then be applied to different
00:05:11
Speaker
landscapes and so it would allow rather than individual studies looking at how is this site going to be affected or how is this small area going to be affected. The idea was to create a framework that could be applied to many landscapes and then we could kind of get a much bigger picture and the kind of the last element of the framework then kind of allowed for different management techniques to be compared
00:05:35
Speaker
in terms of their sustainability to determine the best way to manage the predicted risk, both in terms of how effective it is for protecting that archaeology, but also how economically, environmentally and socially sustainable those methods are.
Climate Change Recognition in Archaeology
00:05:53
Speaker
So I kind of, focusing on my study area, I did a lot of things like trying to get to grips with the archaeology of that area and the kind of nature of that historic landscape, doing things like geophysical surveying and kind of walk over surveys. I used a lot of GIS, which I never thought I would because I hate computers. But yeah, so kind of the aim wasn't to just look at this one place, but it was to create a method
00:06:21
Speaker
that could be used across many different places because obviously the gap that I noticed wasn't just like, oh, this place in Wales, no one knows how archaeology will be affected. It was kind of like in policy in general and impact in adaptation studies in general, archaeology isn't being mentioned. So maybe I can create a way that will facilitate the inclusion of archaeology within those studies. So yes, that was my kind of main goal
00:06:50
Speaker
a lack of consideration for archaeological remains in studying climate change? In your experience has this changed or improved at all since you've started your research? I think it's definitely changing and it's obviously it changed over the four years. It's been about four years since I was applying for my PhD and since that point there's been loads and loads of
00:07:13
Speaker
of progress, I think, in terms of both archaeological and heritage organisations recognising the threat of climate change and kind of how, how they need to address that. And also, kind of in general policy, people thinking actually like, you know, built heritage, material heritage is really important. And realising that the impacts of climate change are more
00:07:40
Speaker
kind of widespread. So I think there has been, as I was doing my PhD, there was more and more things being released about like, actually, these people are doing this and these people are doing that. So while that's great, I was kind of like slow down guys. But yeah, so loads more has been done. But I think it's particularly when I was applying for it in kind of 2016. I really really couldn't see much kind of realistic inclusion of archaeology and policy.
Unexpected Climate Impacts
00:08:06
Speaker
Can you tell us more about what you learned during your PhD research? Was there anything that you didn't expect? Yeah, there was one or two actually. I think a lot of people can guess that sea level rise or coastal erosion won't be great for sites near the coast.
00:08:24
Speaker
they'll be inundated, they'll be eroded. Yeah, that's fair enough. But there were a few other cool and less obvious ways that I found out that archaeology is at risk that I, I mean, other people might have considered, but I hadn't initially considered. So one of them is that rising temperatures obviously allow certain species of plants and animals to expand, kind of expand their ranges to higher latitudes and altitudes. So in this area, it's like further north.
00:08:52
Speaker
And that means that archaeological sites in more northern latitudes, particularly those with organic remains, for instance, will become increasingly at risk of insect attack, for instance, because insects will both expand their range and overwinter more successfully. So come the spring, there are still more insects around, populations can increase, and sometimes insects can kind of have two breeding cycles, rather than one in a year because of the warmer temperatures.
00:09:21
Speaker
And also things like biotivation from the action of plant roots can break up buried sites because the growing season is extending. So plants are growing for longer each year. And so the action of those kind of like biological actions can really impact archaeological sites. And I think it's also seen in shipwrecks because shipworms and stuff like that are moving into further north waters that are further north.
00:09:50
Speaker
I wasn't considered initially the impact that kind of mitigative actions against climate change could have so for instance like offshore wind farms are being built to reduce climate change or to take action against climate change but living built in the North Sea where there's shallower areas
00:10:12
Speaker
But in the shallow areas, they used to be above sea level and they were inhabited. But because the sea there is now kind of 30 metres deep and is really quite rough, obviously, it's more difficult for archaeologists to identify whether they're being built on archaeological sites. You know, you can't just do a strip map and sample at the bottom of the North Sea. So there are watching briefs. So if any kind of obvious flint
00:10:42
Speaker
comes up they're like oh well maybe we need to look at this but it could just be lost in all the sediment. So I think it's interesting that the actions that we're taking to try to like mitigate climate change could also themselves be having a negative impact on the archaeological record.
Advocacy for Holistic Protection
00:10:59
Speaker
Finally, tell us about the future of archaeology and climate change. What can be done to help preserve archaeological remains and heritage sites in the face of a change in climate? I think what a
00:11:10
Speaker
lot of people focus on is kind of like, how do we protect this site from climate change? But I think it'd be really cool if, and what a lot of my PhD focus on actually, is if heritage organisations or local councils start focusing instead on the historic landscape and the way its character as a whole can be protected, rather than thinking that as long as we put a fence around the famous visible sites, then we've protected our connection to the past.
00:11:39
Speaker
because you know in many places that perhaps particularly clearly in Britain because it's such a small island our history and kind of the history of the general working population rather than the few that history books are written about their history is kind of manifested in the landscape through
00:11:57
Speaker
field boundary patterns, the names and characteristics of towns, the remnants of industrial activity in upland areas. The character of these landscapes is really important to national identity and local identity and a feeling of a connection with generations past.
00:12:14
Speaker
And I think that often for the sake of budgets, a few token sites are preserved at the expense of the character of the surrounding area. And obviously I'm not saying that all landscapes should be cryogenically frozen and nothing to change.
00:12:29
Speaker
The whole thing about landscapes is that they're dynamic and they're always changing. And the way that they look today is due to the layers and layers of changes that have occurred across history. So additional layers will be added in the future, but I think a holistic view of that is really valuable when thinking about how best to address the threat of climate change to archaeology, rather than thinking like, we'll just protect this one and whatever about the rest.
Closing and Further Engagement
00:12:55
Speaker
You know, how could we do a more holistic view?
00:12:58
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this archaeology and ale half pint. For more information about Isabelle or her research, please visit the show notes which accompany this episode. And for more information about our podcast, please visit our page on the archaeology podcast network. You can get in touch with us at archaeology in the city on Facebook, WordPress, Instagram, or Twitter. If you have any questions or comments, we'd love to hear from you. See you next time.
00:13:31
Speaker
So,
00:13:41
Speaker
This show is produced by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle, in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.