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Predicting the loss of organic archaeological deposits at a regional scale in Greenland

Across the Arctic, microbial degradation is actively destroying irreplaceable cultural and environmental records that have been preserved within archaeological deposits for millennia. Because it is not possible to survey the many sites in this remote part of the world, new methods are urgently neede...

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Autores principales: Hollesen, Jørgen, Matthiesen, Henning, Fenger-Nielsen, Rasmus, Abermann, Jakob, Westergaard-Nielsen, Andreas, Elberling, Bo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6624202/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31296877
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-45200-4
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author Hollesen, Jørgen
Matthiesen, Henning
Fenger-Nielsen, Rasmus
Abermann, Jakob
Westergaard-Nielsen, Andreas
Elberling, Bo
author_facet Hollesen, Jørgen
Matthiesen, Henning
Fenger-Nielsen, Rasmus
Abermann, Jakob
Westergaard-Nielsen, Andreas
Elberling, Bo
author_sort Hollesen, Jørgen
collection PubMed
description Across the Arctic, microbial degradation is actively destroying irreplaceable cultural and environmental records that have been preserved within archaeological deposits for millennia. Because it is not possible to survey the many sites in this remote part of the world, new methods are urgently needed to detect and assess the potential degradation. Here, we investigate organic deposits at seven archaeological sites located along the dominating west-east climatic gradient in West Greenland. We show that, regardless of age, depositional history and environmental conditions, all organic deposits are highly vulnerable to degradation. A state-of-the-art model that simulates the effect of future climate change on degradation indicates that 30–70% of the archaeological fraction of organic carbon (OC) could disappear within the next 80 years. This range reflects the variation within the climatic gradient and the future climate scenario applied (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5). All archaeological deposits are expected to experience a substantial loss, but the most rapid degradation seems to occur in the continental inland areas of the region, dominated by dry and warm summers. This suggests that organic remains from the Norse Viking Age settlers are especially under threat in the coming years.
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spelling pubmed-66242022019-07-19 Predicting the loss of organic archaeological deposits at a regional scale in Greenland Hollesen, Jørgen Matthiesen, Henning Fenger-Nielsen, Rasmus Abermann, Jakob Westergaard-Nielsen, Andreas Elberling, Bo Sci Rep Article Across the Arctic, microbial degradation is actively destroying irreplaceable cultural and environmental records that have been preserved within archaeological deposits for millennia. Because it is not possible to survey the many sites in this remote part of the world, new methods are urgently needed to detect and assess the potential degradation. Here, we investigate organic deposits at seven archaeological sites located along the dominating west-east climatic gradient in West Greenland. We show that, regardless of age, depositional history and environmental conditions, all organic deposits are highly vulnerable to degradation. A state-of-the-art model that simulates the effect of future climate change on degradation indicates that 30–70% of the archaeological fraction of organic carbon (OC) could disappear within the next 80 years. This range reflects the variation within the climatic gradient and the future climate scenario applied (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5). All archaeological deposits are expected to experience a substantial loss, but the most rapid degradation seems to occur in the continental inland areas of the region, dominated by dry and warm summers. This suggests that organic remains from the Norse Viking Age settlers are especially under threat in the coming years. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-07-11 /pmc/articles/PMC6624202/ /pubmed/31296877 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-45200-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Hollesen, Jørgen
Matthiesen, Henning
Fenger-Nielsen, Rasmus
Abermann, Jakob
Westergaard-Nielsen, Andreas
Elberling, Bo
Predicting the loss of organic archaeological deposits at a regional scale in Greenland
title Predicting the loss of organic archaeological deposits at a regional scale in Greenland
title_full Predicting the loss of organic archaeological deposits at a regional scale in Greenland
title_fullStr Predicting the loss of organic archaeological deposits at a regional scale in Greenland
title_full_unstemmed Predicting the loss of organic archaeological deposits at a regional scale in Greenland
title_short Predicting the loss of organic archaeological deposits at a regional scale in Greenland
title_sort predicting the loss of organic archaeological deposits at a regional scale in greenland
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6624202/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31296877
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-45200-4
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