Arctic heritage sites rapidly degrading due to climate change

(CN) — Time to tick off another unfortunate consequence of the Earth’s warming temperatures due to climate change, as melting Arctic permafrost is causing heritage sites to degrade and deteriorate, making it more difficult for scientists to collect data and perform analyses at important historical locations.

A new study, published Wednesday in the open-access journal PLOS One, details the changes of cultural heritage sites, including the 17th-century “whaler’s graveyard” in Likneset, on Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago near the North Pole and one of the northernmost inhabited areas in the world.

Arctic archaeologist, researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research and co-author of the study Lise Loktu said in an email to Courthouse News that the degradation described in the study is both “a physical transformation of the site itself and a gradual deterioration of the human remains and associated materials preserved within it.”

Loktu explained that graveyard sites such as the one at Likneset, or “Corpse Point,” generally translated from Norwegian, were originally preserved in the permafrost, which can be up to 30 meters thick near the coast.

“As the Arctic warms, that frozen ground is becoming increasingly unstable,” she said. “This affects the burial contexts in several interconnected ways.”

Historically, most Arctic heritage sites were managed under a principle of “in situ preservation” and expected to remain safely preserved in frozen ground. However, the rapid Arctic warming is now challenging that assumption, Loktu said, and many sites that were once considered stable are degrading much faster than heritage management systems can document or protect them.

Not only does the site itself change physically due to the thaw and ground instability, but Loktu also noted it can result in cracking, sinking and sediment movement. At coastal sites like Likneset, the changes are intensified by erosion and reduced sea ice protection.

“Coffins collapse, stone grave structures shift, and burial layers lose their original integrity,” she said. “In some cases, graves are partially or completely destroyed as sediments erode into the sea.”

Additionally, human remains begin to deteriorate once they are no longer protected by stable frozen conditions. The thaw allows moisture and oxygen to penetrate the graves and increases microbial activity. The combination accelerates the decay of organic materials such as wood, leather, textiles, hair, skin and bone surfaces.

It’s a particular concern with the bones because stresses and other indicators preserved within them can tell stories about how the whalers lived their lives.

“These skeletons show us the human cost of Europe’s first oil industry,” the study authors said in a press statement. “We can see how labor, diet, disease, and mobility left physical traces in the people who took part in early Arctic whaling. Many of these men died very young, yet already show clear signs of heavy physical strain, disease, and nutritional stress.”

And the materials degrade at different rates, according to Loktu.

“In our study, skeletal remains were often still present and relatively complete, while textiles and other organic materials had deteriorated dramatically over just a few decades,” she said.

“This suggests that some types of archaeological evidence may disappear long before others. We observed especially strong declines in textile preservation between excavations conducted in the 1980s and new excavations from the same erosion-prone area in 2016.”

The combined condition changes cause the human remains to lose “anatomical context” and ultimately lead to the permanent loss of scientific and historical information, Loktu said, affecting future potential research.

“Ancient DNA and isotope analyses are still possible in many cases, but preservation conditions are becoming increasingly unpredictable,” she said. “Once organic tissues and bone surfaces deteriorate beyond certain thresholds, valuable biological information may be lost forever.”

Loktu said that while the whaler’s graveyard and other archaeological sites’ cultural importance cannot be overstated, she also sees them as “climate archives.”

Some of the graves at Likneset — which has over 200 gravesites — were excavated decades apart under comparable conditions, meaning the researchers could directly observe climate-driven preservation change occurring within the archaeological record.

“Although our study focuses on burial sites on Svalbard, the results are relevant for many other types of Arctic cultural heritage as well,” said Loktu. “Buildings, mining installations, trapping stations, and other historical structures across Svalbard and the Arctic are increasingly threatened by coastal erosion, permafrost thaw, and ground instability.”

Loktu said several sites on Svalbard with historic cabins and structures had to be relocated because of rapid shoreline erosion and the destruction of the coastline.

“In that sense, the sites document both human history and the environmental transformation now taking place in the Arctic,” she said.