Introduction
Historical archaeology in Antarctica has been largely driven by the needs of heritage resource management. Polar heritage sites can be defined by, or have their significance enhanced by, archaeological remains, and the archaeological study of aboveground evidence and buried deposits has long been used in researching and conserving such sites in Antarctica.
In Antarctica, archaeological sites are rare commodities. Human presence on the continent and its surrounding islands has been relatively recent, brief, infrequent, and widely scattered. The range of human activities – exploration, sealing, whaling, and scientific research – has been very limited, and sites often relate to a single use at a single point in time. These sites have immense archaeological potential and, at the same time, are unique elements of the world’s cultural heritage. They are also very expensive to study, given their isolated location and difficult access, severe climatic conditions, and the...
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Further Reading
Harrowfield, D.L. 2005. Archaeology on ice: A review of historical archaeology in Antarctica. New Zealand Journal of Archaeology 26: 5–28.
Senatore, M.X., and A. Zarankin. 2011. Widening the scope of the Antarctic heritage archaeology and the “The ugly, the dirty and the evil” in Antarctic history. In Polar settlements – Location, techniques and conservation, ed. S. Barr and P. Chaplin, 51–59. Norway: International Polar Heritage Committee, International Council on Monuments and Sites.
Wood, P. 2011. Whiteout: An examination of the material culture of remembrance and identity generated between New Zealand and Antarctica. Memory Connection 1: 183–195.
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Pearson, M., Senatore, M.X. (2018). Antarctica: Historical Archaeology. In: Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_1745-2
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