Archaeological Knowledge Under Threat

Event details Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2026 Time: 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM Location: Archaeological Research Facility, 2251 College Type: Lecture / Workshop Audience: Alumni,Faculty,Prospective Students,Public,Staff,Students About this event Knowledge of how people interacted with each other and the environment in the past can inform our understanding of the future and help us address current challenges facing human populations, such as migrations, resource depletion, and climate change. Knowledge generation in archaeology relies on vast amounts of information collected through excavation, survey, laboratory analysis, community engagement, and archival research to name a few. Destruction of information sources, thus, has far-reaching impacts on our understanding of the past, present, and future. This event will explore contemporary threats to archaeological knowledge production and knowledge curation. Some threats, such as looting and climate change-driven disruptions, can have obvious destructive impacts. Looting of sites causes widespread physical damage and loss of context for the stolen objects. Climate change, whether erosion, sea level rise, fires, or displacement of populations, also causes physical damage to archaeological remains. Other threats to our understanding of the past can be much more abstract and less visible. These include regulatory changes, financial disruptions, professional incentive systems, and even the algorithmic processes behind generative AI. Even if sites are spared from physically destructive impacts, the information they contain may still be at threat even after careful excavation. Three speakers will reflect on these dramatic shifts in the physical and intellectual landscape of archaeological knowledge production and discuss approaches to mitigating the loss of information in archaeological research. Official event details: https://events.berkeley.edu/arf/event/330452-archaeological-knowledge-under-threat