The Shore is a Bridge: the maritime cultural landscape of Lake Ontario

This is an excellent, readable volume intersecting public archaeology, climate change and culturalheritage management. The publication stemmed from a session on ‘Engaging the public with archaeology threatened by climate change’, held at the European Association of Archaeologists’ (EAA) 2015 Annual Meeting in Glasgow. The volume of curated papers is well introduced by the four editors in ch. 1, ‘Public Archaeology and Climate Change’. The volume brings to the fore the complexity and range of environmental threats to heritage sites brought on by changed climatic conditions, and includes case-studies from around the globe, demonstrating threats to heritage inland and along the coastline, and regional management responses. Chapter 2 draws on a 2016 report—World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate—published by UNESCO, and outlines the types of threats from climate change on World Heritage sites. This chapter introduces a good thread that runs throughout the volume which is recognition of the threat of climate change and specific impacts on indigenous cultures and traditions. I particularly enjoyed reading the case-study articles outlining research that was or is being conducted in the United Kingdom (chs 3–7), Iberia (ch. 8), Brittany (ch. 9), Greenland (ch. 10), Western Iceland (ch. 11), California (ch. 13), Alaska (ch. 14), Lesser Antilles (ch. 15), Uruguay (ch. 16), Australia (ch. 17) and Japan (ch. 18). The significant contribution of Scottish archaeology in this field is manifestly demonstrated in ‘A central role for communities: climate change and coastal heritage management in Scotland’, by Tom Dawson (ch. 3). The case-studies reinforce repeatedly the lack of resilience archaeological and historic sites have to changed environmental conditions on both a macro and micro level, and the scale of loss occurring to cultural heritage globally. They also emphasize and demonstrate the value of integrating the public into developing approaches to threats to archaeological heritage. Recognizing the scale of this environmental change, and the vast number of known and unknown archaeological sites that are threatened, the authors discuss a range of ways they have used to engage the public to assist in the discovery, documentation and monitoring of sites. In some examples the public’s involvement extends to rescue archaeology, but more examples demonstrate the enormous value of engaging, informing and empowering a local public who can more easily monitor sites on a day-to-day basis to record their disappearing heritage. The documentation methodology proposed by various projects in this volume varies, though many build on the methodology of the Scottish ‘Shorewatch’ programme (ch. 3), which was established in the late 1990s. Several case-studies demonstrate the rapidly growing utility of photogrammetry and its integration as a basic tool for archaeology and site-management. Other case-studies, such as the excellent example ‘Coastal erosion and public archaeology in Brittany, France: recent experiences from the Alert project’, by Pau Olmos Benlloch, Elı́as López-Romero and Marie-Yvane Daire (ch. 9), demonstrate the capacity to inform cultural-heritage management through public archaeology. By enabling community members to quantify the vulnerability of sites, cultural-heritage managers can effectively prioritize limited resources to ‘mitigate’ activities. Highlighting impacts on the intangible values of places is one of the key contributions of this volume. The effects of climate change on customs and connection to country is excellently demonstrated in ‘Racing against time: preparing for the impacts of climate change on California’s archaeological resources’, by Michael Newland et al. (ch. 13), ‘Threatened heritage and community archaeology on Alaska’s North Slope’, by Anne M. Jensen (ch. 14), ‘Cultural Heritage under threat: the effects of climate change on the small island of Barbuda, Lesser Antilles’, by Sophia Perdikaris et al. (ch. 15), ‘Australian Indigenous rangers managing the impacts of climate change on cultural heritage sites’, by Bethune Carmichael et al. (ch. 17) and ‘Perception of the relationship between climate change and traditional wooden heritage in Japan’, by Peter Brimblecombe and Mikiko Hayashi (ch. 18). It is encouraging to read the papers in this publication, demonstrated so well in ch. 17, that incorporate bestpractice community consultation, ‘ask first’ principles, and participatory and multi-vocal approaches to problem solving. To ensure a continuity of place for traditional custodians, these papers encourage us to recognize community connection to the spiritual or social values of a place and consider incorporating it into planning, management, monitoring and documentation.