William Megarry

Queen's University Belfast | QUB · Archaeology and Palaeoecology

This paper addresses an acknowledged knowledge gap by exploring both impact and risk in an African cultural context. It is the first paper to assess the same methodology at two very different site types in two very different regions. It provides a bottom-up, values-based and community focused approach to understanding climate risk. It therefore pre...

In a collaboration between the UK Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) Urgency Grants invited proposals from researchers using innovative approaches to address the impacts of natural disasters and climate change on tangible...

Climate change is the greatest threat facing global natural and cultural heritage. All World Heritage (WH) properties will be impacted over the coming century, and our ability to adapt will often be limited. Yet climate change was a threat never envisioned by the drafters of the World Heritage Convention (WHC). This chapter considers how concepts c...

Morel, H., W. Megarry, A. Potts, Y. Arikan, E. Brondizio, M. Cassar, G. Flato, J. Hosagrahar, R. Jigyasu, V. Mason-Delmotte, H. Oumarou Ibrahim, H. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, S. Sengupta, P. Dolma Sherpa, R. Veillon, S. Forgesson, 2022. Global Research and Action Agenda on Culture, Heritage and Climate Change. ICSM CHC, Paris

Climate change is a major risk to World Heritage (WH) and many sites are already experiencing impacts from climate change related hazards. This report outlines the results of applying the Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) to Sukur Cultural Landscape, a WH property in northeastern Nigeria. The CVI methodology is a technique to assess rapidly the vul...

Shortly after arriving in the Shetland archipelago early in the 4th millennium BC, communities began to quarry and make stone tools from riebeckite felsite, quarried from the Northmavine region of North Mainland. The effort expended traveling to the quarry sites, extracting, making and crafting tools was considerable indicating the importance of fe...

Between 2018 and 2020, CyArk, Google Arts and Culture and the International Council for Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) worked together on the Heritage on the Edge project. Launched on the Google Arts and Culture platform in January 2020, this project utilised a range of techniques to highlight the impacts and local experiences of climate change at fi...

The End-of-Life (EOL) stage of the first commercial wind farms is fast approaching and uncertainty remains in how to deal with their non-biodegradable Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composite wind turbine blades. Repurposing options could potentially delay large volumes of material entering unsustainable waste streams such as landfill or incinerati...

Upland landscapes were challenging environments for the settlement and subsistence of past communities because of their elevation and environmental sensitivity. These challenges have, however, contributed to the preservation of abundant archaeological remains, many of which are now wholly or partially covered by blanket peat. In this paper we repor...

https://www.icomos.org/en/what-we-do/image-what-we-do/77-articles-en-francais/59522-icomos-releases-future-of-our-pasts-report-to-increase-engagement-of-cultural-heritage-in-climate-action

The application of high-resolution imagery from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to classify the spatial extent and morphological character of ground and polished stone tool production at quarry sites in the Shetland Islands is explored in this paper. These sites are manifest as dense concentrations of felsite and artefacts clearly visible on the sur...

Satellite imagery has had limited application in the analysis of pre-colonial settlement archaeology in the Caribbean; visible evidence of wooden structures perishes quickly in tropical climates. Only slight topographic modifications remain, typically associated with middens. Nonetheless, surface scatters, as well as the soil characteristics they p...

Satellite imagery has had limited application in the analysis of pre-colonial settlement archaeology in the Caribbean; visible evidence of wooden structures perishes quickly in tropical climates. Only slight topographic modifications remain, typically associated with middens. Nonetheless, surface scatters, as well as the soil characteristics they p...

Remotely sensed data and imagery have revolutionized the way we understand archaeological sites and landscapes. LiDAR / airborne laser scanning (ALS) has been used to capture the often subtle topographic remnants of previously undiscovered sites even in intensely studied landscapes, and is rapidly becoming a key technology in survey projects with l...

The L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data were collected by the NASA UAVSAR platform almost exactly two years apart, on 19 March 2013 and on 21 March 2015. The second of the two flights was conducted to see if the production of a very high-resolu- tion decorrelation image (described below) could detect and gauge the degree of any disturbance t...

The application of custom classification techniques and posterior probability modeling (PPM) using Worldview-2 multispectral imagery to archaeological field survey is presented in this paper. Research is focused on the identification of Neolithic felsite stone tool workshops in the North Mavine region of the Shetland Islands in Northern Scotland. S...

This paper is not about the history or archaeology of Priniatikos Pyrgos per se. Rather, it is a review of how the site was recorded using both traditional survey and planning techniques and digital approaches applied through a Geographical Information System (hereafter GIS) during the 2007 through 2010 seasons. Earlier work at the site will necess...

The UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Archaeological Ensemble of the Bend in the Boyne (‘Brú na Bóinne’) is one of the most important archaeological landscapes in Europe. This paper reviews results from an ongoing project which is using high-resolution elevation (LiDAR) data and Worldview2 multispectral imagery to identify and catalogue new sites i...

The Settlement at Dhaskalio is the first volume in the series The Sanctuary on Keros: Excavations at Dhaskalio and Dhaskalio Kavos, 2006-2008, edited by Colin Renfrew, Olga Philaniotou, Neil Brodie, Giorgos Gavalas and Michael Boyd. Here the findings are presented from the well-stratified settlement of Dhaskalio, today an islet near the Cycladic is...

Archaeology owes much to science in terms of theory and practice, and as a source of investigative techniques. The subfield of archaeological science draws on various branches of science and has shed much light on the archaeological works commissioned by the National Roads Authority (NRA). The occasion of Dublin hosting the international conference...

Identifying and preserving archaeological sites before they are destroyed is a very important issue. In this paper, we develop a greatly improved archaeological predictive model $APM_{enhanced}$ that predicts where archaeological sites will be found. This approach is applied to remotely-sensed multispectral bands and a single topographical band obt...

The use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery collected by the NASA AirSAR platform to detect archaeological site location on San Clemente Island, one of the Southern Channel Islands, has been described in several publications. Here we provide a concise review of the use of SAR for that purpose, as well as a description of how a precise surface...

My thesis explores a wide range of themes addressing past human interaction with the landscape. On a broad level it is interested in the dynamic between people and their environment, and how it changed and evolved throughout the Bronze Age on Crete. More specifically, it is interested in rural mountainous and elevated areas and how these landscapes...

Seanda, the NRA Archaeology Magazine, was a free annual publication of the NRA Archaeology Section, which was first published in December 2006. It's role was to communicate the results of NRA-funded archaeological investigations to the general public in a non-technical, easily understood format. Seanda featured news items and articles written by ar...

This report records the origins, processes and results of a GIS survey of the proposed route for the N4 Carrick-on-Shannon to Dromod road scheme. It covers both on and off-line sections of the route following proposed routes 1.2 and 2.2. It uses a variety of data however is primarily based on LiDAR data provided by the National Roads Authority/ Lei...

This report details the third phase of research of the Boyne Valley Landscape Project which has seen Irish National Strategic Archaeological Research (INSTAR) funding from 2008 to 2010. The overarching aims of the project are to produce an integrated, comprehensive landscape archaeological model of the evolution of the Boyne catchment, and so devel...

The development of Minoan Peak Sanctuaries in the Middle Bronze Age has long been seen as a ritual response to agricultural changes resulting in increased reliance on pastoral activities and the exploitation of previously nonviable land. This paper proposes that sanctuaries may have been deliberately situated on locally prominent sites intentionall...