This project is a partnership between the newly established University of California San Diego Scripps Center for Maritime Archaeology and the Department of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa. The goal: to investigate the impact of long-term climate change and rising sea levels on the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean – especially those along the coast of Israel.
The understanding of long-term climate change and human adaptation is key to understanding current climate change and rising sea levels. The coast of Israel has been home to cultures from prehistoric to modern times that have actively adapted to oscillating sea levels in a myriad of ways over the past 10,000 years. These challenges are intricately linked to residence by the sea, where nearby archaeological deposits and sediments provide a unique ‘archive’ of climatic and ecological data. The new information can be easily compared with Israel’s rich archaeological and historical record. Together, these datasets can be used to model climate change in the greater Mediterranean basin.
Using the scientific strengths of both institutes, this multi-disciplinary investigation uses a combination of underwater archaeology, geoarchaeology, geophysics, maritime biology, engineering and robotics to reconstruct the climatic history of the last 6,000 years along the coast of Dor, Israel.
