A major component of the secondment involved being familiar with publicly available Norwegian geological and geospatial datasets relevant to archaeological heritage research. This included exploration of Norwegian datasets and mapping services covering bedrock geology, surface deposits and Quaternary geology, geomorphological features, LiDAR-derived Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) ground deformation datasets, and hazard maps (e.g., landslides, rock avalanche, and quick clay). These datasets are highly relevant to archaeological risk assessment because they provide information on the site, the landscape context, and potential hazard conditions.
Another key activity was observing the laboratory preparation of lake sediment core samples for pollen analysis. This activity demonstrated the workflow for how sediment cores from lake beds are processed to extract environmental proxies, such as pollen, which are useful for reconstructing past vegetation, climate conditions, and landscape development. These records provide information about palaeoenvironmental changes over large time periods, and offer insights into the landscapes where past human populations lived.
Although the laboratory work focused on reconstructing past environments, it has significant relevance to present and future climate change research. Information from palaeoenvironment reconstruction can be established as reference baselines of natural environmental variability sans anthropogenic-related factors. They can reveal how landscapes and ecosystems responded to past climatic shifts, and hence, become beneficial for studies that predict future conditions of these landscapes and ecosystems due to anthropogenic climate change.
This secondment demonstrated the importance of understanding geological datasets to archaeological heritage risk management. Additionally, geological and geospatial resources and interdisciplinary perspectives on earth surface processes and hazards provide crucial information in further developing a systematic and comprehensive climate risk assessment framework that fits the needs of heritage sites endangered by climate change.
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