Sea Change – the littoral environment

Sea Change research project
Key learning

Sea Change is a four-year research project aiming to contribute with knowledge about the most important existential question in our time: how should we act given the dramatic changes in the climate? The project is led by Professor Johan Rönnby at MARIS, the Institute for Marine Archaeology at Södertörn University.

Archaeological long-term perspectives make it possible to uncover and understand mankind’s relation to the environment in historical times. The project aims to describe the wide variety of living conditions and attitudes that have existed during the millennia with a focus on early man’s interaction with nature. Hopefully, this will have some importance for today’s discourse and choice of strategies for the environment.

The project is cross-disciplinary, combining the marine archaeological perspective with geographical analyses, environmental studies and osteology. This partnership is complementary and stimulating for the archaeological outcome. It is rare for the field of marine archaeology to see beyond a specific object and aim for a wider study of the environment.

Project Sea Change involves separate studies of three different coastal areas: two in the Baltic Sea and one in the Black Sea. The common theme is to show different human strategies and relations to the sea with a focus on changes in the sea and the maritime environment.

Archaeology is central to these studies, because of its unique ability to describe a coastal environment over time and understand the relationship between man and nature. The aim is to use the marine archaeological perspective to contribute to the discussion about how people today should relate to the sea and act in the face of current and coming environmental changes.

VOTO supports a four-year marine archaeology project

VOTO has decided to support a project called ”Sea Change; New marine archaeological perspectives: Man and the littoral environment ”, run by Professor Johan Rönnby, MARIS, Södertörn University.

Sea Change is a research project aiming to contribute with knowledge about the most important existential question in our time: how should we act given the dramatic changes in the climate?

– Archaeological long-term perspectives make it possible to uncover and understand mankind’s relation to the environment in historical times. The project aims to describe the wide variety of living conditions and attitudes that have existed during the millennia with a focus on early man’s interaction with nature, says Professor Johan Rönnby.

The project is cross-disciplinary, combining the marine archaeological perspective with geographical analyses, environmental studies and osteology. Project Sea Change involves separate studies of three different coastal areas, one of which is geographically well separated from the other two (two in the Baltic Sea, one in the Black Sea). The common theme is to show different human strategies and relations to the sea with a focus on changes in the sea and the maritime environment.

Archaeology is central to these studies, because of its unique ability to describe a coastal environment over time and to understand the relationship between man and nature. The aim is to use the marine archaeological perspective to contribute to the discussion about how people today should relate to the sea and act in the face of current and coming environmental changes.

For more information, please contact Björn Hagberg: [email protected]

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