Title uses quotes from the linked article^1 published 22 Nov. 2022 in Antiquity.

Excerpt:

>Climate change is affecting archaeological sites and landscapes around the world. Increased rainfall, more frequent extreme weather events, higher temperatures and rising seas not only create new risks but also exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and threats.

>Building on an earlier Antiquity article that explored climate change and arctic archaeology (Hollesen et al. 2018), this special section provides a global perspective on the impact of climate change on archaeological sites and landscapes and how archaeologists and cultural heritage managers are responding.

>This article introduces the following three contributions, outlining their main findings to provide an overview of the various challenges around the world, and highlighting current gaps in knowledge and future research opportunities.

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>Although this special section can only touch upon some of the many potential effects of climate change on archaeological resources around the world, it seeks to demonstrate the scale and complexity of the situation with which we are confronted.

>With climate change threatening an uncalculated number of archaeological sites, totalling perhaps millions globally (Heilen et al. 2018; Dawson et al. 2020), it seems reasonable to question whether current management practices and mechanisms will be able to respond to a situation that is so demanding.

>There are no easy solutions and time is limited. Thus, if we are to respond meaningfully, there is an urgent need to develop new methods and strategies that can tackle the problem head on. As suggested in this special section, and in other recent articles (e.g. Heilen et al. 2018; Hollesen et al. 2018), the first step is to determine where these impacts will occur and which types of sites will be the most affected.

>[The] vulnerability of archaeological sites can only be understood when the interactions between climate change and other factors, such as landscape modification, urbanisation and water management, are also considered.

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>Even if archaeologists and planners in years to come are equipped with tools efficient enough to pin-point the most vulnerable sites, they will still be faced with difficult decisions: which sites should be saved, and which sites should be allowed to decay?

>Climate change is accelerating, amplifying existing risks and creating new ones, the consequences of which could be devastating for the global archaeological record.

^1 Hollesen, J. (2022) “Climate change and the loss of archaeological sites and landscapes: a global perspective,” Antiquity. Cambridge University Press, 96(390), pp. 1382–1395. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2022.113.