THE ROLE OF GEOARCHAEOLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS IN CULTURAL MITIGATION FOR OFFSHORE WIND DEVELOPMENT: TOWARDS A BEST PRACTICES APPROACH

Underwater cultural heritage spans the entirety of human history, from submerged landscapes to the tangible remains of water- and aircraft. Cultural resources assessments generally adequately address tangible heritage in the marine record. Similarly, identifying ‘sites’ in a terrestrial context typically relies on artifact presence, while, in contrast, the scale of offshore archaeological investigation is often limited to the landscape level. Geophysical and geotechnical surveys, often consisting of thousands of line-kms of high-resolution data and hundreds of sediment cores and soil borings, are conducted in advance of each successfully permitted project. Marine archaeologists review and assess these data, resulting in archaeological assessments that are reviewed by government agencies and tribal stakeholders for concurrence and comment.

Despite the incorporation of advanced and emerging geophysical technologies, marine archaeologists are typically limited to identifying portions of submerged landscapes, or landscape features, as opposed to discrete archaeological sites. For tribal stakeholders, however, these landforms and landscapes may already be known as significant. Cultural heritage laws require identification and avoidance of any potentially significant resources, but it is difficult to avoid an entire landscape during offshore development. Thus, archaeologists are called on to develop cultural mitigations appropriate to the landscape-level analyses available. Meaningful mitigations can only be developed in coordination with open dialogues about data interpretations and data limitations. This paper will identify challenges associated with addressing the significance of intangible heritage and review the methods used to interpret landscape data with respect to cultural research questions.