Project takes University of Bradford to Gulf of Mexico

The five-year project, funded by the US Federal agency, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), has received $1.5 million (£1.1 million) to identify and then study submerged archaeological landscapes in the region that was dry land during the last Ice Age, drowned since then by sea-level rise.

It will integrate Indigenous Tribal communities during all phases of research through workshops, training, fieldwork opportunities and the development of an open-access online short course in submerged landscape archaeology.

The project, ‘Re-evaluating BOEM’s Guidelines for Identifying Submerged Pre-Contact Archaeological Sites in the Gulf of Mexico: An Extensive Geoarchaeological Approach’, includes Dr Simon Fitch and Dr Jess Cook Hale from the University of Bradford’s Submerged Landscapes Research Centre and partners from the Florida State University’s Native American and Indigenous Studies Center, Texas A&M’s Center for the Study of First Americans, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga and Smithsonian Institute.

Dr Simon Fitch and Dr Jess Cook Hale, from the University of Bradford’s Submerged Landscapes Research Centre, will be taking part in the project in the Gulf of Mexico (Image: University of Bradford)

They will carry out offshore surveys in the Gulf of Mexico, which includes coastlines along Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

The project will trial new methods to detect archaeological sites. Divers will carry out further analysis work at known, documented archaeological sites along the Gulf of Mexico to improve analytical methods.

The University of Bradford will recruit an international PhD student in 2025 who will work on the project for three years from its Submerged Landscapes Centre.

It is hoped the selected student will be from an Indigenous background or have experience of working closely with these communities.

Dr Fitch said: “People from Indigenous backgrounds have a culture that stems back tens of thousands of years.

“As a broader society, we’ve not paid as much attention to that as we should have done. It’s important to acknowledge it. It is part of their history and culture.”

Despite more than a century of research, archaeologists still have many questions about sites left behind by people that lived on these landscapes before sea-level rise drowned them.

Fewer than 50 such submerged sites have been documented in the Gulf of Mexico, many of them in semi-disturbed conditions.

A larger number of sites need to be detected and analysed to advance scientific understanding of these periods of human history and to improve cultural heritage management practices.

Dr Cook Hale said: “One of the most important aspects of this project is knowledge transfer to Tribal Nations across the region. We know from multiple global examples that Indigenous stewardship of landscapes results in better outcomes.

“The Gulf has a long history of offshore development in oil and gas prospection that is now evolving into green initiatives such as offshore wind. It is critical that Tribal Nations be at the forefront of caring for these landscapes going forward.”