Swedigarch Inspirational Lecture #3 Q&A session with Marcy Rockman: The Radical Importance of Now in Linking Archaeology and Climate Change

Welcome to a Swedigarch Inspirational Lecture #3 online Q&A session with Marcy Rockman on April 10, 2024, 4–5 pm (Swedish time) at https://gu-se.zoom.us/j/61082535216.

Marcy Rockman’s Swedigarch Inspirational Lecture #3 The Radical Importance of Now in Linking Archaeology and Climate Change was originally planned for December 6, 2023, but had to be cancelled owing to technical problems. The lecture has been recorded and can be found here. The Q&A session provides an opportunity to further discuss the potentials and pitfalls of how archaeology can contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation.

About the lecture
Archaeology has long understood itself to be fundamentally about material remains of the past and that the responsibility of archaeologists and heritage managers is foremost to steward objects, places, and data for the future. But over nearly 15 years of working with cultural heritage and climate change policy at US national and international levels, the power of archaeology that Marcy Rockman is seeing most clearly is its capacity to connect us with the present and allow us to see ourselves and relationships in new ways. In this talk she shares experiences and insights with the framing of research questions, finding and sharing of stories, and emphasizes how needed the skills and perspectives of archaeologists are in building sustainable responses to climate change.

Marcy Rockman is an archaeologist with experience in national and international climate change policy. Her research focus is landscape learning, which explores how humans gather, remember, and share environmental information. She has used this to address situations as diverse as cultural resource management in the American West and homeland security risk communication in Washington, DC. In 2011–2018 Marcy served with the US National Park Service as the inaugural Climate Change Adaptation Coordinator for Cultural Resources. More recently, she has held multiple international and US national roles in the field of overlap between cultural heritage management and climate science and policy, for instance working with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and coordinating climate change hearings and briefings with the US Congress. Currently, Marcy is Director of Lifting Rocks – Climate and Heritage Consulting (www.liftingrocks.org) and Associate Research Professor with the Department of Anthropology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Arizona.

New research article 
Marcy’s new research article about climate change, heritage, and policy, with a case study of the US federal government was published in PNAS on March 25, 2024: Capacity of the U.S. federal system for cultural heritage to meet challenges of climate change.