Climate crisis, the archaeological sites buried by the sand

Coastal erosion threatens archaeological sites on all continents. 60 percent of the 284 African coastal sites of “outstanding universal value” could be endangered from an extreme coastal event by 2050. And 42 of the European sites listed by Unesco as a World Heritage Site, located in low-lying coastal regions of the Mediterranean, are at risk of erosion. “Current climate change projections, coupled with human impact, point to a bleak future for the ancient remains of many coastal sites rich in archeology“says Marriner.

Archaeologists have few tools to prevent damage caused by drought. The budgets to protect the most important sites are already reduced to a minimum. The construction of a marine barrier that could save coastal sites such as the ancient port of Siraf it would cost at least $ 400,000 per kilometer. That’s out of the question, says Marriner.

Difficult countermeasures

The most effective protection measures would be those for prevent droughtwhich first require a immediate reduction of human emissions of greenhouse gases that warm the Earth and fuel desertification. To reduce the impact of drought governments must also develop more sustainable water policies and settle water disputes with neighboring countries. The Iraqi government, for example, claims that huge dam projects in Turkey and Iran will cut water flowing along the Tigris and Euphrates by 60 percent over the next 14 years. Jaafar Jotheri, a professor of geoarchaeology at Al-Qadisiyah University in Iraq, explains that farmers will be forced to exploit the underground salt ponds to irrigate crops. The salt is then blown onto Iraqi archaeological sites, some of which date back as far as 5,000 years ago, soaking their semi-organic mud bricks and causing them to crumble.

“We will lose our archaeological sites 100 percent – says Jotheri -. We will lose them completely because they will be covered in sand. The rest will be destroyed by wind, temperature and salt“.

Archaeologists can also try to get governments to consider physical heritage in their environmental policies, but it is people who have priority on the whole. The drought has already forced the Iranians to leave 1700 countries in southern Khorasan, the region on the northern border of Sistan.

For now, researchers can only document as many of the affected sites as possible. Both Rouhani and Fradley are part of the project Endangered archeology in the Middle East and North Africa from the University of Oxford, which has developed a public database of over 333,000 sites from twenty countries and encourages other archaeologists to contribute their data. The sand could bury even the tallest spiers and citadels, but thanks to the work of the project at least we will know where to dig.

This article originally appeared on Wired UK.