This article is part of a USA TODAY reporting assignment called “Dangerous Courses,” a collaborative look at how other people on the East Coast are dealing with the climate crisis. Journalists from more than 35 newsrooms from New Hampshire to Florida communicate with others about the genuine impacts, dig deeper into the science, and investigate the government’s response, or lack thereof.
The grassy hill, replete with snakes and savannah palm trees, dominated Sara Ayers-Rigsby as she watched the erosion at its base.
The archaeologist conscientiously placed a photomacrographic scale on the well-packed oyster shells exposed at the foot of the hill, as if the weight of the pocket paper measuring tool could leave a mark.
He would record any changes, even minimal, with pictures on his phone and doodles in his notebook.
This mound of shells in Jupiter, Florida, built thousands of years ago by Jeaga, a Native American people who lived in north Palm Beach and in the coastal counties of Martin. The mound had survived time, structure and the removal of curtains for the roads.
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South Florida’s early pioneers, Henry and Susan DuBois, built a space atop the mound in the early twentieth century. Today, the historic one watches over an 18-acre county park visited by divers and beach walkers, with picnic tables strategically placed beneath the shade of sea grapes that provide shelter on a hot day.
The lifestyles of the site reinforce the concept that this position has been well appreciated by humans over the centuries and has therefore made it a precedent for maintaining it as a cultural resource. However, the vast history of human life, revealed through ancient and archaeological sites. in Florida, it is increasingly in danger of getting lost in the tides due to the man-made climate crisis.
Some cultural sites such as DuBois Park are well known and public, while the places of others are only known to archaeologists. These places, for investigation, are kept secret through state law to prevent looting.
Some sites face a faster or more drastic effect than others.
The shell exposed on Jupiter’s mound, for example, would possibly experience faster deterioration with more powerful or more common storms, said Ayers-Rigsthrough, director of the Florida Public Archaeology Network, a state educational organization at the University of West Florida. She oversees the southeast and southwest region, hosted through Florida Atlantic U.
As he walked around the site, he pointed to other effects of the climate crisis, such as how the county government moved another design of the DuBois circle to cope with emerging sea levels.
“It’s not exciting or if you’re doing archaeology just for the sake of doing archaeology,” he said. “It’s exciting and because it has relevance to the other people living now. “
With hundreds, if not thousands, of cultural resources across the state, where does an archaeologist start acting?First, it’s about making sure that South Florida counties, which have come together to scale up an action plan on how to jointly deal with climate replacement, also recognize the effect on archaeological resources.
Ayers-Rigsby partnered with other archaeologists to list cultural sites that local governments can refer to when prioritizing inspections or conservation of post-storm damage, if applicable, first in Palm Beach County on Florida’s east coast and then on the west coast in Collier County.
Ayers-Rigsby is carrying out this task in Miami-Dade County, where he plans to prioritize a so-called Miami Circle, a National Historic Landmark.
The detail is the only known evidence of a permanent prehistoric design excavated into bedrock in the eastern United States and, in particular, predates other known permanent settlements on the East Coast to recent discoveries on the north side of the river. (2/4) peakArraytwitter. com/ sVYO5Lslc2
Before spandex-clad runners trotted along the river, before the sound of morning traffic echoed through skyscrapers, before cruise ships waited for tourists, the Tequesta, a Native American tribe that lived along Florida’s southeast coast, settled in this land where the Miami River meets Biscayne Bay. The site was to be remodeled in the 1990s, but the discovery of limestone circles led to a normal effort to maintain and prove this history.
Today, it’s a rare touch of public greenery in downtown Miami, two acres in total, enjoyed on a recent morning through unrobeaten dogs and a longboarder paddling on the paved road.
“This is the story of who we are like other people,” Ayers-Rigsby said on the site. “We are in the history of the other people who have occupied the Miami River for thousands of years, so we don’t need to lose meaning. heritage and our sense of the afterlife with the changing fashionable climate, right?Because then we are disconnected (from) this larger chronology. “
Ayers-Rigsthrough grew up knowing she was looking to be an archaeologist. She attracts common trips to the museum as a child and reads novels through Cynthia Voigt, as well as family members who shared a love of the subject but never worked in the fields. field.
When she lived in Germany, her mother attended night categories of Egyptology at university.
“I knew it wasn’t for her when they spent, say, an entire semester analyzing a bachelor hieroglyph, and she thought, ‘Wow, this is too detailed for me to fully appreciate,'” she said. His grandfather also enjoyed archaeology. But anyone ended up running in the world of finance.
“I feel like I’m breaking the circle of the family curse for being an archaeologist,” she said.
However, if you place the mother-daughter duo in the museum or in an ancient site, they will be the ones who will comb through the didactic panel and soak up everything.
“We ask a lot of questions of the teacher or the poor volunteer who takes us,” he said. “We’re the other people in a traveling band that slows down the rest of the band. “
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Ayers-Rigsby studied classical archaeology at Trinity College Dublin, where he discovered ancient Mediterranean artifacts in Greece and Italy, and then pursued postgraduate studies at the University of Bristol in England, where he developed a fondness for science communication.
“Maybe it was just the cumulative effect of communicating with other people over and over again, whether it’s on a flight, in the pub or anywhere, I talk about archaeology.
Initially, in his career, he made a link between his career and climate change.
The streets and parking lot outside the Fort Lauderdale office where he worked were flooded and put the issues of the climate crisis first.
“We think it destroys our future, but we don’t communicate how it also destroys our past,” Ayers-Rigsby said.
For inspiration, she looks at how humans in the afterlife have dealt with climate change.
There is evidence that humans began living in Florida only about 15,000 years ago. Florida then is very different from today, with a land twice as wide, with a cooler climate and a grassy savannah landscape.
For thousands of years, as Florida’s climate approached what it is today, other people learned to manage their resources well and cope with the transformation of environments during their lifetimes through natural climate change, compared to man-made changes that accentuate and improve those conditions.
“There’s a real message of resilience in the past,” Ayers-Rigsby said. “Archaeology and ancient sites have valuable data for us as we try to navigate through modern climate change. “
The first indigenous peoples of this region built mounds made from local shells; many have been destroyed by erosion or development. Archaeologists still debate why they were built: were they ceremonies, monuments, or residences?What do you think??: The DuBois mound, early twentieth century pic. twitter. com/8GBc4I7Dnd
Whether it’s the country’s smallest outpost in the town of Everglades, a shell site at Fakahatchee Key, or the roughly 100-year-old Macedonian Missionary Baptist Church in Naples, a cultural resource has a greater chance of getting the resources to save itself from the climate to replace if the public is aware of it, unlike an ancient secret treasure, it’s also hard for an archaeologist to admit, Ayers-Rigsby said.
She learned this by working with archaeologist Rachael Kangas of FPAN in Collier County to coordinate with communities for which cultural resources are vital.
On Florida’s west coast, Ayers-Rigsby and Kangas sought information from the network about what resources deserve to be saved.
Key to this research was a sea level rise mapping tool developed in collaboration with Michael Savarese, a professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, cash from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill agreement. The Workers’ Coalition, local governments and the Collier County NAACP, the latter helping archaeologists identify and prioritize a church that served a traditionally black community. This church was not on any old list of signs.
Stakeholders chose 10 archaeological sites to serve as samples of vulnerable resources, a scoring formula that took into account exposure, sensitivity, adaptability and the consequences of inaction.
Possibly there would be too many sites to back up, or not all sites, known or unknown, can be stored from the sea rise point due to the load or their location.
“It’s not unusual for cultural resources to go unnoticed, which is unfortunate. Obviously, we are nothing without our cultural heritage,” Savarese said. such as roads and water source systems. This type of assessment also provides local governments with a starting point for archaeological sites when thinking about the reaction to climate change.
A tree can be replanted. A road can be rebuilt. But there’s no way to update a 2,000-year-old mound of shells or an eighteenth-century Spanish shipwreck, Kangas said.
Preserving a site can mean fortifying a delicate marine coastline with mangroves cutting trails or building a less ideal and more beloved dike. coastal erosion, so instead, a 3D scan of the site in its pristine peak state will live digitally.
Much of the discussion around climate updating revolves around one of two things: how to slow down or eliminate worsening effects, or how to best prepare for what is inevitable. And rightly so. Scientists reported that there was more carbon dioxide in the environment in May 2022 than ever before.
The idea of the weather renewing itself making its way through time can lead to an apathetic fall.
Ayers-Rigsby’s sunny disposition and his preference for sharing his archaeological wisdom with those who will pay attention to the powers through any feeling of despair.
“I like to focus on the things that are going well and where we can make changes, because I think it shows that it’s possible,” Ayers-Rigsby said. “I think the danger is when you put yourself in a scenario where you think, ‘It’s all horrible and nobody cares or listens to me, so what’s the point?'”
Not everything can be saved, but the recoverable makes sense to those of us who live today.
Back on Jupiter, the truth of archaeology is in plain sight, as the presence of artifacts and evidence from beyond humans will prevent destructive forces, whether it’s climate replacement or development.
Ayers-Rigsby stood in the path of projectiles on the ground protruding slightly into the waterway like a stretched index finger. Palm trees extended above the head as a breakwater from coastal erosion.
From this point of view, a stone’s throw from DuBois Park and Jeaga Hill, the prioritization of historic sites has already developed in some way.
She pointed to two other archaeological sites within the view.
On the south side there is a plot under construction, which is an old cell house park; to the north is Jupiter’s gateway lighthouse, perched on a sand dune at the water’s edge, which benefits from federal government investment to protect what it can from the erosion forces of global warming.
Hannah Morse covers customer issues for The Palm Beach Post. Write to hmorse@pbpost. com, call (561-820-4833) or follow her on Twitter @mannahhorse.