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Coastal erosion in Cyrenaica (Eastern Libya) represents a major problem for archaeology and heritage management. The area is rich in archaeological sites, often understudied or not fully documented, but also has extensive stretches of vulnerable eroding coastline. This study demonstrates the extent and impact of erosion via shoreline change assessment at two spatial scales. Firstly, wide area assessment using shorelines extracted from a time-series of medium-resolution Landsat imagery. Secondly, site-specific assessment using recent and historic Very High Resolution (VHR) satellite imagery. In both cases, extracted shorelines at different timesteps were compared using the Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) tool to quantify rates and magnitudes of shoreline movement. The results show extensive zones of erosion at and around the key ancient harbour sites of Apollonia, Ptolemais and Tocra. They also suggest increased rates of coastal retreat in recent years, which is likely linked to anthropogenic actions such as sand mining and urbanization. Forecasts based on present-day shoreline change rates, coupled with ground-level documentation of the vulnerable shorelines is used to identify archaeological features and structures which will likely be progressively damaged or destroyed over the next 20 years. The ability to actively protect archaeological sites is unclear, but there is a clear need for mitigation in the form of enhanced awareness of environmental problems (e.g. caused by sand mining) and more intensive survey/documentation of sites and areas which will be lost in the coming years., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Westley et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

The Middle East and North Africa have witnessed a surfeit of geospatial data collection projects, resulting in big databases with powerful deductive capacities. Despite the valuable insights and expansive evidentiary record offered by those databases, emphasis on anthropogenic threats to cultural heritage, combined with a limited integration of local perspectives, have raised important questions on the ethical and epistemological dimensions of big data. This paper contextualizes maritime cultural heritage (MCH) in those debates through the lens of the Maritime Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa project (MarEA). MarEA is developing a unique for the region database for MCH designed to amalgamate a baseline record emphasizing spatial location, state of preservation, and vulnerability. This record will form a stepping stone toward finer-grained research on MCH and its interdisciplinary intersections. It is also developed as an information resource to facilitate local collaborators in prioritizing site monitoring and developing documentation, management, and mitigation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inland waterways, such as rivers and lakes have been foci of human settlement and use for millennia. However, underwater archaeological prospection or survey in these environments is often hindered by poor or no-visibility conditions. While this can be overcome using a range of well-established geophysical techniques, their application in inland waterways seems comparatively less common than in offshore environments. Possible reasons include the logistical challenges of surveying shallow confined, often inaccessible and uncharted waters coupled with a wider lack of awareness of the submerged archaeological potential of inland waterways. This paper demonstrates one method by which the logistical challenge can be circumvented, specifically the use of low-cost acoustic systems which combine a single-beam echo sounder and sidescan sonar. These systems have appeared within the last decade and are smaller and cheaper than their survey-grade counterparts. Although developed for the sport fishing community, as shown here, they can also be used for archaeological purposes. Their effectiveness for archaeological prospection is illustrated via three case studies from lacustrine and riverine settings in Northern Ireland and by reference to object detection and bathymetric mapping. The data presented indicate that the low-cost systems are capable of collecting data that is sufficient for archaeological purposes but they are best suited to shallow confined waters where their disadvantages (limited range and depth of operation, reduced image quality) are minimized. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present early to Mid-Holocene paleo-geographic reconstructions for the Ramore Head area (Northern Ireland). This coastal area is characterized by Mesolithic occupation (c. 10-6 ka) and preserved early-Mid-Holocene peats both on- and offshore. This paper improves on previous reconstructions by employing a backstripping methodology, which removes accumulated recent deposits from identified buried paleo-landsurfaces instead of using modern topography as an analogue to the past landscape. Paleo-landsurfaces are identified offshore from seismic profiles supplemented by cores, and onshore through legacy borehole records. The paleo-landsurface can be traced offshore to depths of −2 to −19 m and is buried by <5 m of modern sediment. It extends onshore under the coastal town of Portrush and is buried <2.5-10 m below modern ground level. The identified paleo-landsurface is combined with sea-level curves from recent Glacio-Isostatic-Adjustment models to reconstruct marine transgression during the early-Mid-Holocene. Comparison is also made with reconstructions based on modern topography. Together, the identified paleo-landsurfaces and revised reconstructions can assist future site prospection on- and offshore and delimit high-potential areas for heritage management. Revised reconstructions also allow placement of extant archaeology into a more accurate context of landscape change and help develop insights into local-scale site location patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]