Citizen Science in Coastal Archaeology

Abstract

CITiZAN, the Coastal and InterTidal Zone Archaeology Network, is an English community-based project concerned with the recording and long-term monitoring of archaeological sites exposed to erosion on the coast and open foreshore. It was set up with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (now the National Lottery Heritage Fund) in 2015, with additional support from the United Kingdom’s (UK) National Trust, the Crown Estate, Lloyds Register Foundation, and Historic England, among others. CITiZAN’s three regional teams are hosted by Museum of London Archaeology in London, the Council for British Archaeology in York, and the Nautical Archaeology Society in Portsmouth. From these bases, six local Discovery Programmes operate in Liverpool Bay, Humberside, the Solent, South Devon, East Kent, and on Mersea Island in Essex. CITiZAN became increasingly concerned not just with heritage loss, but also with habitat loss along England’s coasts as a result of climate change. This chapter sets out the background to CITiZAN’s citizen science work and summarizes progress on the “Changing Minds, Changing Coasts” project.