Archaeology & Sustainability
Archaeology gives us a unique perspective on how people have lived with, and shaped, their environments over thousands of years. By studying past landscapes, settlements, and materials, we can see how communities adapted to change, managed resources, and made choices that shaped the world we’ve inherited.
In a time of climate crisis and environmental change, archaeology helps us ask vital questions: What can the past teach us about sustainable living? How have people balanced progress with preservation? What traces of our own lifestyles will future archaeologists uncover?
What is Climate Change?
According to the United Nations, climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns across the planet. While these changes can occur naturally over time, since the 1800s, human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas, have become the main driver.
Burning these fuels releases greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. These gases act like a blanket around the Earth, trapping heat and causing the planet’s temperature to rise. This process, known as the greenhouse effect, is leading to warmer global temperatures, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, and more extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, and wildfires.
Climate change affects ecosystems, food and water supplies, and people’s health and livelihoods around the world. It is one of the most urgent challenges we face, but it is also a challenge we can address.
Archaeology and the Climate Crisis
Roots in Time
This talk delves into the award winning Roots in Time project, what went on and how it combined heritage, community and sustainability. Along the way, we dip into the site’s fascinating Iron Age and Roman archaeology too, as it is seemingly a Roman farmstead with intriguing stories to tell of trade, travellers and trinkets
Time Team Talks Climate and Environment
Join Time Team cast members Carenza Lewis, Stuart Ainsworth, Helen Geake and creator and producer Tim Taylor for a lively discusson on climate and environment. The group look back on some of the memorable Time Team episodes that highlighted issues of climate change and consider the valuable role archaeology has to play in helping us to understand our changing environment.