Harmen O. Huigens

Tropical cyclones are among the most detrimental hazards to the environment, societies, and economies, each year affecting millions of people and resulting in substantial casualties and material destructions in coastal communities. In this context, maritime cultural heritage, encompassing material evidence for the engagement of people with the sea, both on land and under water, is particularly vulnerable. Despite the significant number of archaeological sites exposed to tropical cyclones and other extreme sea-level events, maritime cultural heritage in the MENA region is rarely included in coastal vulnerability indices or incorporated in mitigation strategies, disaster management, sustainability, and resilience policies. In this study we examine the impact of tropical cyclones on the maritime archaeology of Oman with emphasis on the Dhofar region. This paper builds on existing coastal research in the Dhofar region—an area identified as the most cyclone-prone administrative region in Oman, but also an area that contains substantial archaeological remains. Central among Dhofar’s maritime cultural heritage is Al-Baleed, a Medieval seaport with unparalleled evidence of engagement with international trade networks.

For millennia, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has been a culturally dynamic zone, bounded by maritime societies dependent on the sea for communication, trade and livelihoods. The archaeological evidence of these past societies represents an extraordinary physical legacy of human endeavour and presence across this region, contributing to senses of place, identity and belonging amongst contemporary coastal communities. However, the coastal landscapes and marine environment of the MENA region are undergoing a period of profound change, associated with large-scale human development and climate change. In order to assess this change and the level of impact on the resource, the Maritime Endangered Archaeology project (MarEA) was established in 2019 to document cultural heritage sites and landscapes across the coastal and near-shore zones of the survey region. This paper introduces the work of the project and outlines a series of case studies presented in this volume that are representative of the variety and depth of work being undertaken within the project.

Climate change threatens coastal archaeology through storm flooding (extreme sea-level: ESL), long-term sea-level rise (SLR) and coastal erosion. Many regions, like the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), lack key baseline evidence. We present initial results from a climate change threat assessment of MENA's coastal heritage using the Maritime Endangered Archaeology inventory: a geospatial database of MENA maritime archaeological sites incorporating a disturbance/ threat assessment. It informs two analyses of past disturbance and future threat: (1) using the integral threat/disturbance assessment, and (2) geospatial extraction of information from external coastal change models. Analysis suggests <5% of documented coastal sites are definitely affected by coastal erosion but up to 34% could also have experienced past flooding, erosion, or storm action. Climate change-related threats will increase over the 21st Century and accelerate post-2050 if carbon emissions remain high. SLR and ESL could impact 14–25% of sites by 2050 and 18–34% by 2100. Over 30% to 40% of sites could be impacted by erosion by 2050 and 2100 respectively. Whilst documentation is ongoing and there remain modeling uncertainties, this approach provides a means to redress the absence of baseline data on climate change threats to coastal cultural heritage in MENA .

(2017). Revolutions in the Desert. The Rise of Mobile Pastoralism in the Southern Levant. Levant: Vol. 49, No. 1, pp. 82-84.

In June 2013, an archaeological survey was carried out in the Hazimah plains, situated in the Jebel Qurma region of north-eastern Jordan. These plains surround the so-called Black Desert or harra, which has been known to contain an extremely rich archaeological and epigraphic record. In contrast to the harra, little is known about the archaeology of the surrounding hamad landscapes, and the survey presented in this paper aims to contribute to filling in this gap of knowledge. Initially, the survey aims to investigate the long-term history of settlement and land-use of this seemingly hostile environment, and, at the same time, seeks out an efficient methodology for locating the remains of the largely mobile communities that inhabited the Hazimah plains in the past.