08/03/2024
Community Archaeology 2024: Coast, Climate, and Community Conference
6 April 2024 at the University of East Anglia
Norfolk is a coastal county with a vast array of heritage found on its coastal fringe. From tools and footprints, found at Happisburgh, dating from around 900,000 years ago, through to 20th century military installations placed to protect against invasion, much of this heritage is vulnerable to erosion. With climate change, rates of erosion are set to rise through increased sea level height and stronger storms resulting more energy in weather systems. Storm and surge events, such as those experienced on the coast in the 1953 floods and 2013 Christmas storms are likely to become more common and their destructive potential will result in loss of archaeological sites and structures. River systems will also change with a likelihood of more volatile events creating more inland floods and in some parts of the county, such as the Fens and the Broads, the salination of underlying freshwater conditions which are currently preserving archaeological and paleoenvironmental deposits. How can communities deal with these losses?
Almost exactly two years ago the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society held a successful Community Archaeology Conference. We explored the importance and relevance of community archaeology through four themes, community and diversity, specialism, technologies and the future and health and well-being. This conference will touch on all these themes again with an emphasis on exploring the readiness, skills and organisation of the community archaeological sector to rise to the challenge of climate change and the alteration of familiar landscapes.
We will hear from community archaeology practitioners, academics, health specialists, and there will be an opportunity to take part in a Training Workshop on recording archaeology on the coast led by the Nautical Archaeology Society.
There will also be an invitation to participate in the inaugural meeting of the Norfolk Community Archaeology Forum, being proposed as a new space for conversations and skill sharing for all those interested in community archaeology in Norfolk.
Speakers and workshop participants will include:
• Andrew Farrell, Project Director, Broads Authority
• Neil Redfern, Executive Director of the Council for British Archaeology
• Laura Drysdale, Director of the Restoration Trust
• Andy Hutcheson, Research Fellow in the Centre for Archaeology and Heritage at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Culture, UEA
• Mike Pinner, Chair of the Caistor Roman Project
• Michael Curtis, Trustee and Executive Board Member of the Nautical Archaeology Society
• Peta Knott, Education Manager, Nautical Archaeology Society
• Joanne Clarke, Hon Professor of Archaeology at UEA and contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
• Claire Harris, MOLA, Deep History Detectives Re-mixed and Pathways to Ancient Britain
• Lawrence Northall, Coasts in Mind, Community Partnerships Project Officer, CITiZAN (MOLA)
Booking now at
Our Programme The Society organises monthly lectures from September to March, and a variety of trips, visits and walks from April to August. These are open to members and non-members alike. In many years we also run a residential holiday, which is for members only. We organise a biennial conference,...
