Archaeological sites throughout the Mississippi River Delta (MRD) are rapidly disappearing as a result of coastal erosion and subsidence, exacerbated by storm surges, anthropogenic climate change, sea-level rise, and alterations of coastal landforms and hydrology. As formerly-terrestrial cultural deposits are increasingly submerged, eroded, re-deposited and removed from archaeological context, opportunities for conservation of the human environment and learning about the past are irretrievably lost. Subsidence is making deeply-buried and submerged deposits inaccessible for study. Among the most prominent and still-intact sites are the earthen mounds and shell midden constructed by indigenous peoples during the Late Woodland and Mississippi periods (400-1700 CE). These sites are culturally affiliated with modern-day Native American tribes and eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
The destruction of these unique places and monuments of earth and shell represents an unmitigated loss of untapped sources of information on more than a millennium of human habitation in the MRD. The processes of site obliteration are anthropogenic, brought about by the construction of pipelines, levees, canals and dredging, which have made coastal sites increasingly vulnerable to tidal action and storm surges. The goals of the Mississippi River Delta Archaeological Assessment and Mitigation (MRD-AAM) project are to establish a comprehensive program of environmental impact assessment, advance scientific knowledge of long-term historical ecology, interaction and resilience in the MRD and north-central Gulf Coast, and provide for alternative mitigation of the effects of coastal erosion, subsidence and sea-level rise.
The MRD-AAM research group is comprised of investigators at Louisiana universities, in partnership and collaboration with the Louisiana State Historic Preservation Office, the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, and Southeast Archeological Center of the National Park Service, federal and state agencies, Native American tribes, and experts from the cultural resource management industry.
For more information, contact:
Dr. Mark A. Rees, Louisiana Public Archaeology Lab, 108 Mouton Hall, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA 70504.
LAPAL