Diminishing Horizons

The 21st century has witnessed an increase in the pace of global warming linked to greenhouse gas concentrations, which has led to rising temperatures, higher sea levels and more extreme weather events (droughts and floods). These conditions have detrimentally affected buried waterlogged archaeological deposits, artefacts and palaeoenvironmental proxies (remnants of past environments). To understand and respond to this threat to buried urban archaeological deposits, new dynamic heritage management systems to hold such data are needed. Archaeologists Paul
Flintoft, Kristina Krawiec and John Schofield will highlight the work of the City of York Deposit Model Project and the MICROPLASS project, which aim to address these issues with an integrated, updatable deposit model and Historic Environment Record (HER) system. These models are designed to help the City of York manage its fragile archaeological resource and raise public awareness.