A Joint UC San Diego Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology – Department of Maritime Civilizations, University of Haifa Project- Summer 2018
This project is a partnership between the newly established University of California San Diego Scripps Center for Maritime Archaeology and the Department of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa. The goal: to investigate the impact of long-term climate change and rising sea levels on the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean – especially those along the coast of Israel.
The understanding of long-term climate change and human adaptation is key to understanding current climate change and rising sea levels. The coast of Israel has been home to cultures from prehistoric to modern times that have actively adapted to oscillating sea levels in a myriad of ways over the past 10,000 years. These challenges are intricately linked to residence by the sea, where nearby archaeological deposits and sediments provide a unique ‘archive’ of climatic and ecological data. The new information can be easily compared with Israel’s rich archaeological and historical record. Together, these datasets can be used to model climate change in the greater Mediterranean basin.
Using the scientific strengths of both institutes, this multi-disciplinary investigation uses a combination of underwater archaeology, geoarchaeology, geophysics, maritime biology, engineering and robotics to reconstruct the climatic history of the last 6,000 years along the coast of Dor, Israel.
The partnership, headed by Prof. Tom Levy of UC San Diego and Prof. Assaf Yasur-Landau of Haifa, aims at several related goals in the next year
- Expeditionary field work in September 2017, which includes aerial drone and underwater 3D recording of submerged features at Dor, mapping existing underwater reefs and establishing the scientific diving plan and logistics for the summer program.
- Joint UCSD-Haifa underwater archaeology field school (for college credit), including 12 students from Haifa and 12 students from UCSD at Tel Dor in July 2018 for one month. It will provide the students with advanced underwater techniques of archaeological work and environmental underwater sampling that the students will need to participate in the fieldwork and subsequent lab work.
- June-September 2018: acquiring samples of sediment and rock by underwater drilling and coring, and initial lab work on these samples in UCSD and Haifa.
- September-November 2018: 3 Ph.D. students from Haifa arrive at UCSD to work on PhD research in Scripps Institution of Oceanography laboratories, and 3 Ph.D. students from UC San Diego arrive at Haifa to work in the Haifa labs on archaeological data, as well as on additional data acquisition for the project.
- Postdoctoral researcher from Israel takes up residence at UC San Diego to research marine archaeology data from this project.