The unknown archaeological riches that Miami could lose in front of the increase in sea level

MIAMI—Cuando el huracán Irma aceleró hacia el condado Miami-Dade, Jeff Ransom no podía dormir.Not only did he worry that some bursts of wind could break windows or torrential rains could flood the road, something that is far from being unusual near his house in Broward County, where the extreme time is almost routine and parts of the road OR.S.1 regularly are submerged.

Pero lo que también le preocupaba a Ransom —arqueólogo del condado— era un roble con raíces de 350 años de edad. Le preocupaba el hecho de que si ese árbol se cayera con suficiente velocidad, sus raíces arrancadas podrían desenterrar restos humanos.

On a November morning, several weeks after the storm, under a brilliantly blue sky we traveled to the funeral mounds of the indigenous Tequeta, which were one of the concerns that revealed to Ransom when Irma was approaching in September.

"All night, I was just thinking about what would happen if that oak turned away," he says.“The great roots grow just within the funeral mound.That would have dispersed human bone everywhere ".

Los vientos de Irma les dieron un ‘recorte’ al follaje de los árboles en el Deering Estate, una hacienda histórica cuyos terrenos contienen el montículo funerario y otros sitios de fósiles.Deering is administered by the Department of Parks, Recreation and Open Space of Miami-Dade County.Under the peeled branches, the growth was rapid as the vines and sprouts - nourished by marine seaweed - extended in search of the sun.The result has been a second spring: brilliant young leaves have been fighting eagerly for space between Almácigo and the strangulative fig tree.Ransom opens his way with his machete, which he carries in a kind of cover that hangs from his waist.Two blows break the branches of the Brazilian pimitor, but that was because the machete is disliked, Ransom tells me.Normally a single blow is enough to cut them, as if they were butter.

Ransom is 52 years old, with a square jaw and black sunglasses type aviator.At one point, the glasses disappear inside the leaf carpet, which has become more dense since the storm.Ransom spends a few minutes looking for them under the fronds cut before remembering that he has spare lenses that with almost identical.

The funeral mound had no problems during Irma and is still good.The oak trunk is strong and thick;The roots are deeply sunk on earth.We sat down in some banks that are close, drinking water in the shadow while Ransom uses the edge of his machete to remove those sticky seeds that have left some plants in their pants and shoes.

La tormenta no azotó a la ciudad con toda su fuerza: por lo general, el sudeste de la Florida se salvó del grosor de los daños que habían pronosticado los meteorólogos.Half mile of mangroves protected the Cutler Midden - another archaeological site in the deering estate - of the damage caused by waves whipping the coast.Old tools made of peels and ceramic fragments also survived the storm intact.

Aunque Irma podría haber golpeado más fuertemente a la ciudad en general, en lugares aislados sí hizo estragos.We went through fragments of a historic entrably established that the archaeologists had documented and written down laboriously. La estructura “había sido despedazada” durante la tormenta, según explica Mallory Fenn, la coordinadora de arqueología pública en el departamento del sudeste/sudoeste de la Florida Public Archaeology Network (Red de Arqueología Pública de la Florida o FPAN por sus siglas en inglés).The network is a project from the University of West Florida;The Southeast/Southwest Division operates from Florida Atlantic University.

The walk seems to have been chewed and spit: its component pieces are barely visible.An orange and white barrier extends along the destroyed walk as if it were not extremely obvious that what happened.

***

Before I flew to Miami to follow Fenn and Ransom for the swamp, Sara Ayers-Rigsby sent me a list of what I had to pack for the trip.Ayers-Rigsby is the regional director of FPAN for the Southeast/Southwest area and the trunk of her car is full of supplies, from musketeers to Pretzels bags.He writes to me that he will have quite a repellent of insects and solar filter to share with me but that he should bring long sleeves and pants shirts, in addition to the most waterproof boots he had.We will be vaining through the maximum point of the tides queens and the sea may reach our knees.Heat and humidity can also have a disorienting effect.Later Ayers-Rigsby describes time as "hot enough to melt brains".

"The time in the south of Florida is inhospitable," he warns.In general terms, that is precisely the problem.Numerous projections predict an extreme future and persistent floods that are incompatible with many family elements of life in the peninsula.Of all the US states, Florida is the most vulnerable to growth at sea level and Miami-Dade County runs a remarkable danger in this aspect.

A medida que el avión va descendiendo para aterrizar en Florida, el agua está en todas partes: en estanques color verde azulado que se extienden al horizonte, en remolinos del color del fango, en vías acuáticas formales que están llenas de yates blancos.From the air, many of these basins seem full, ready to spill with the smallest amount of additional fluids.

Sooner or later, the water will swallow the coast.Regarding the magnitude, severity and chronology of all this, there are nuances and gradations of apocalyptic colors.In 2015, a working group composed of authorities from all over the Florida set out to agree on threats and create strategies for mitigation efforts.Su proyección se basa en las medidas locales de la marea y se alinea con cálculos aproximados del Cuerpo de Ingenieros del Ejército Estadounidense y la National Oceanic and Administración Nacional Oceánica y Atmosférica (NOAA por sus siglas en inglés). Para 2030, prevén un crecimiento en el nivel del mar de unas 6 a 10 pulgadas en comparación con un punto de referencia establecido en 1992.They forecast a growth of up to 26 inches by 2060 and a growth of about 61 inches for 2100.

Even if the water does not reach that heights, the damage could still be extensive and devastating. Un 25% de la tierra en el condado Miami Dade se encuentra menos de tres pies por encima del nivel del mar, según el World Resources Institiute (Instituto de Recursos Mundiales).10% of the ground of the county is less than one foot from being at sea level.

And if the water reaches the maximum level, the results could be cataclysmic. En un reporte reciente, Zillow —el sitio web de bienes raíces— calculó que si el nivel del mar subiera en unos 6 pies, un 24% del suministro de vivienda de Miami quedaría empapado.

What worries Ransom and Ayers-Rigsby is that a sea level growth of only half of the amount used in the Zillow calculation could destroy up to 16,095 archaeological sites throughout the state.As the earth becomes more wet or the waters take it, how are the objects that are embedded in it protect it?

"You cannot protect an archaeological site in a plastic bubble wrapping and place it on a tall shelf," said Ayers-Rigsby on the phone after Irma passed through Miami.Some sites can be stabilized or damping with mangroves or hatcher. “Aparte de construir una estructura masiva por todo su alrededor, no hay mucho que se pueda hacer”, dice Ayers-Rigsby.

Among the Miami-Dade authorities, "the pill is not gold.Its consequences develop in real time - either in flooded streets or in basements full of water - and at the polls the voters support mitigation efforts. Después de su victoria aplastante en las elecciones de este mes, Francis Suárez —el nuevo alcalde de la ciudad de Miami— le dijo a la filial local de la cadena noticiosa ABC que “Miami debe ser y tiene que ser la ciudad más resiliente del mundo”. Ese mismo día, los votantes aprobaron a una emisión de bonos que dirigirá 192 millones de dólares hacia bombas, muros, desagües y otros proyectos para mantener a la ciudad más seca.Meanwhile, Ransom, Ayers-Rigsby and his colleagues fight to prevent thousands of years of history from getting lost in the sea.

If you wonder what kind of archeology exists in Florida, you would not be remotely the first to do it.On a shared trip from the airport, I told some businessmen from Australia what I had brought me to the city.They turned their heads.For them, Miami evoked beaches, bodies modified by surgery and thick Cuban sandwiches.What else was there?

I tell this to Ayers-Rigsby while we sat on a stuck road, little to little moving from Fort Lauderdale to Biscayne Bay.Groan and lower your head towards the steering wheel.34 years old, Ayers-Rigsby moved to Florida from the center of the east coast of the US and is now a bit evangelist in terms of Miami's merits that have been overlooked.Around his neck he has a slope with the state silhouette.

During all the time that people and animals have inhabited the Florida of our time, they have been getting rid of traces of their lives.FENN says that winter vacationers and rotating group of people who move to this area can suffer a sharp picture of historical amnesia.But scattered sites are millenary tests of life before the coastlines were filled with high buildings made of glass and steel.

The fossil cutler (fossil cutler) is a drinking fountain in which all kinds of Pleistocene creatures fell. Empacados entre los niveles de cal del cenote —y a unos 16 pies por encima del nivel del mar de la cercana Bahía Biscayne— se encontraban los huesos de lobos gigantes, mastodontes, camellos, llamas, tigres de dientes de sable y el león americano.Although the site is protected, the city has spread around it for the last 10,000 years.When looking at the old hole from a crest, the rumble of nearby cars is heard.But the site is hidden and protected from the tracks and water, protected by its isolation and elevation.

Other sites are accommodated with the present in a less harmonious way.At the end of the 90s, archaeologists discovered a circle of holes for posts that had opened on a bed of lime rock in the mouth of the Miami river. La datación por carbono 14 de unos fragmentos de madera ayudó a identificar al sitio como la sede de una estructura construida hace casi 2,000 años atrás por los indígenas tequesta."People have been partying in Miami for thousands of years," jokes Fenn while teaching me the site.Archaeologists, archivist of indigenous cultures and a galvanized audience fought with a real estate promoter who had bought the property to be the future headquarters of some luxury condominiums (at that time there was quite controversial when some scholars wondered if the employer was something elseCurrent: The drain site for a septic system. La revista Archeology pidió la opinión de otros arqueólogos, estudiosos y un contratista maestro de tanques sépticos, y este último sumariamente descartó la posibilidad de que sitio tequesta tuviera ese propósito).

El Miami Circle (Círculo de Miami) fue designado un Hito Histórico Nacional en 2009.Today, the site is a herbous terrain that is shaded by the high condominiums and hotels that have been built around it.From the circle you can see cruises and load ships sailing away.It is a weird green space in a vertiginous corner of the city, which means that sometimes it becomes a place where dogs raise their legs. De hecho, un perrito peludo se agacha cerca de nosotros mientras que Fenn describe su trabajo en un sitio arqueológico al otro lado del río estrecho, en donde los arqueólogos desenterraron artefactos adicionales de los tequesta en 2014, justo en la zona donde se iba a construir un complejo masivo de uso mixto.These excavations are a crazy combination of the old and the modern."When you look down, you think it's the 1850s, with a palette and a sieve," he says."And then you look up and see the metromover passing".

The Miami circle site is now surrounded by elegant departments and hotels.(Jessica Leigh Hester/Citylab)

During Irma, Agua penetrated the walls just below the Miami circle site.It exploded through the grass, carrying fronds of palm trees that had arrived from the river.Fenn, who lives near the site, ran practically as soon as we were allowed to be outside to review it.Soon the water backed down without leaving apparent damage.This particular place has been filled with material to reinforce it so that this type of flood can resist just.

Other sites that lack these preventive measures are more vulnerable.But studying them can reveal important data on the growing sea, and how long the scholars have to create a plan.

***

Ransom and Ayers-Rigsby are making their way to a dense thicket and a padded land of pointed bromelias. Saben lo que están buscando: una varilla de acero con una punta pintada de color naranja, la cual enterraron en la orilla del río Oleta.But Irma knocked the trees to which they had tied yellow ties to help them identify the sites from a distance.Now that orange tip rod must be covered with land.

This soft piece of the shore is the site of a prehistoric site that contains traces of tools made of peels, ceramics and other common items that would have been used by the indigenous tribes that lived on the banks. "If there is a site to erode, it will be this," says Ransom while Chapotea for the mud.

The site is a old garbage pile and is almost at the water level, which makes this site an ideal candidate to monitor flooding and increased sea level before and after events such as storms and tides queens.When obtaining a base measure and a group of comparisons, archaeologists can document both accumulation and erosion.Therefore, they can notice which events seem to pile more sediments on the site and which ones take them away, and therefore threaten to take the artifacts to the sea.

The idea of using this area to represent fluctuations at sea level dates back decades ago.At the end of the 70s and in the early 80s, Robert Carr - who was at that time the county archaeologist - found old coal tests buried at two feet under the surface.Since the fire needs to be dry, Carr reasoned that part of the site was once above sea level.At that time, climate change "undoubtedly was not a popular issue" in the community of archaeologists, he tells me by phone.There was no "particular movement or attention on the subject". Carr abogó por emplear inundación de tierra, datación con carbono 14 y niveles de mar como pruebas sólidas para variaciones pasadas y futuras.His work put the foundations for what Ransom and Ayers-Rigsby are currently doing.

In an afternoon recently, the roots of the mangroves are dotted with strange pieces of modern garbage: murky glass bottles, a short table for surfing that is stained, a black case for DVD, a squeeze squeeze of papitas of the Ruffles brand.According to Ayers-Rigsby, these are not someone's signs furtively to use the forest as a garbage dump, this garbage was brought here by the waves.

She and Ransom strive to walk through the mud - paying brave ants of their backs and shoulders - to measure the distance between the rod and the water line.They write down the measures in a yellow notebook whose pages are deformed by water.In some parts, the sediment is piled up higher than was the last time they measured it, which was before Irma.This accumulation suggests that the water level penetrated a good part of the coast during the storm, says Ransom.

Carr explains that this is not unequivocally dangerous: there is still not enough certainty to determine if flooding is an impediment to preservation of sites in the same way that erosion is.Possibly a site "could be better preserved under water than above the earth if the increase in sea level is gradual and not the result of strong swells whipping the coast and destroying and removing earth," says Ransom.

Through his work in FPAN, Ayers-Rigsby has also helped recruit a team of scientific citizens that extend throughout the State and carry out regular monitoring of the sites that are in danger.Called the Heritage Monitoring Scouts or monitoring explorers of the inheritance, the team of scientific citizens is a brigade of more than 200 people who measure sites accessible to the public - not the most sensitive, such as the unmarked fields - and upload their impressions to a formOn a website. La creación de los Heritage Monitoring Scouts fue inspirada por un programa en el Reino Unido llamado Scotland’s Coastal Heritage at Risk (Patrimonio Costero de Escocia en Riesgo).The ‘scouts’ are looking for signs of floods, erosion or action for the waves, as well as any artifacts that have been brought to the surface.The places that need urgent attention also mark.

Paula Streeter, una voluntaria de 62 años, mide el yacimiento de cáscaras en la isla Calusa, un puntito de tierra en la costa sudoeste del estado que una vez fue habitada por los indígenas calusa.Streeter has a very varied background.Your curriculum includes "millions and trillions of things," he tells me on the phone.After having retired from the city's secretary's office, he has been helping archaeologists."I just just started with this," he says."It was the most amazing thing of my life and it only happened two years ago".

Ya mismo el litoral de la isla Calusa está siendo consumido por el oleaje y el viento, dice Streeter.The artifacts are being revealed in the site, relics of the use of shells to manufacture tools and weapons, but the common person who visits the beach may not realize them."If you have trained you, you know that this is an ancient hammer form made of a horn peel or a red snail," says Streeter.

The Calusa Island site is only accessible by a boat or kayak: "You can't get there in two by three," says Streeter.Before recent hurricanes and tides queens, the team wanted to make measurements once a month (the site is also monitored by researchers from the University of Florida).When the lying trees exposed to those artifacts, the team increased the frequency once a month.And instead of leaving the artifacts on the site, the volunteers draw the original locations and put some in bags so that they are not taken to the sea.The Heritage Monitoring Scouts use the installation of rods to measure the distance between the edge of the site and the beach.Even without its precise calculations, it is easy to notice the effect of waves and wind on the exposed roots and at the dramatic angle of a sand projection.

Some of these sites contain clues that will enrich or rectify historical records.An example is Egmont Key's waning island, which remains in the Gulf's waters near Tampa.

A few years ago, the U.S.Army Corps of Engineers communicated with the semínolas - a tribe of local indigenous people - to find out about the diminishing island. Se estaba erosionando fuertemente —se había reducido a 280 acres, la mitad de su tamaño anterior— y los ingenieros se estaban preguntando si deberían rellenarla con arena.Was the tribe interested in keeping it?

The imminent threat of the earth's mass was the impetus to discover the history of the site. Con la ayuda de sus colegas, el doctor Paul Backhouse —director del museo Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum y responsable de la Preservación Histórica Tribal para la Tribu Semínola de la Florida— llevó a cabo unas investigaciones y aprendió que, a mediados del siglo XIX, cuando la tribu tuvo varias escaramuzas con el ejército estadounidense, la isla fue un sitio de detención para los semínolas que fueron capturados al tratar de evitar los barcos desplegados para llevarlos al oeste.Judging by contemporary stories, the conditions were nefarious: there were no sources of fresh water and the captives were trapped.

The island is no more than six feet above sea level.Did the tribe wanted to keep it above the waves?Among the semi -alala community, "the response of the large majority was that" Backhouse tells in a telephone interview. A nivel arqueológico, había mucho que aprender del sitio y de los artefactos del siglo XIX que se habían acumulado allí, pero también podría funcionar como un lugar de catarsis y educación."Young people can come and remember the struggle that their ancestors fought for staying in Florida," says Backhouse. "This story is a hidden story ... it is not one that is found in any of the textbooks because it is represents a embarrassment for normal American history".

Egmont Key is found in the front lines.With sufficient elevation or distance from pedestrian traffic, many other sites will be safe for a relatively long time by virtue of staying dry or hidden.But as the sea level little by little it rises, it will be necessary to make decisions.

***

This autumn has been onerous for Deering Estate. El huracán Irma y las mareas reinas en octubre propinaron un doble golpe, explica Jennifer Tisthammer, la directora de la hacienda.

During that first tide queen, the fucking cyclonic flooded the service road with waters that reached the ankles and also flooded the grass from behind where they take place a lot of the special events in Deering Estate.Irma storms started at 80% of the tree canopy and 6,000 cubic yards of sea seaweed were dragged to the property by the waters.Tisthammer's long -term vision is to raise the back grass, but in the meantime the staff sought prophylactic measures to mitigate aesthetics and encourage drainage.According to Tisthammer, the terrón is better but the white stone looks better than grass brown mojada.When the staff extends huge amounts of sand and stones to encourage drainage, the puddles that had been taking weeks to drain were emptied within a few days.

Even if a totally underwater future is still distant, the tides queens offer a regular memory of it, and also a kind of testing. En una página dedicada a las mareas reinas y al cambio climático, la Agencia para la Protección Ambiental observa: “el crecimiento en el nivel del mar hará que las mareas reinas de hoy en día se conviertan en las mareas cotidianas del futuro”.

Places like Deering Estate are already taking into account preventive and adaptive strategies in their budget items."There will be some losses," says Tisthammer."We invest 3 million dollars in something that is known that over time will end under the sea or do we allocate those funds differently?".

The types of data that Ayers-Rigsby and Ransom are collecting can be used to guide the broader planning and budgeting of the city. Y este diciembre, Miami-Dade y tres condados aledaños están tomando en cuenta los sitios arqueológicos, agregando provisiones al plan de acción actualizado del Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact (Convenio Regional del Sudeste de la Florida sobre el Cambio Climático).The document is not binding but makes several recommendations.Encourages local authorities to collaborate with specialists in historical preservation to draw and qualify the sites that are in danger.It also promotes that they appeal to the Federal Agency for Emergency Management, local emergency management offices and other agencies to obtain financial resources.And finally, it encourages them to implement sustainable preservation tactics such as sowing mangroves and spartillo and performing the “hard shield” of sites with stones or concrete.Now, these strategies have their inconveniences."Hard methods may negatively impact the sites due to the weight and displacement of large rocks, not to mention the cost of acquiring these and transfer them to remote places," says Ransom.

The solution is also not as complex as starting the artifacts of the Earth and transporting them to the museum collections where they may be preserved behind Plexiglass showcases. Para la tribu semínola —al igual que para muchos otros grupos indígenas— la filosofía prevaleciente es que los artículos descartados a lo largo de los siglos se deben dejar en sus lugares.Recognize that this approach to catalog objects, "surround them and draw plans avoiding them and not thinking about these objects only as research vehicles" perhaps "go totally against what most people think it is archeology".But Ayers-Rigsby and Ransom also think that excavation is a kind of last option.

According to Backhouse, in the semi -alala culture there is a difference between something that is overturned by an earthquake and something that is found to the surface by human hands.The underlying philosophy is to seek harmony and balance with nature, "he says," and "indigenous cultures have no idea that nature is always pleasant".

La primavera pasada, mi colega Linda Poon reportó que la vasta mayoría de los estados carecían de cualquier mención de recursos históricos en sus planes para el manejo de desastres.To date it has also been the case in Miami-Dade, says Ayers-Rigsby."One of the reasons why I was so happy that we had some language in the draft of the Climate Action Fund was to make people notice the subject," he adds."Before, I was not included at all at any level".There is an impetus in this address: at the end of October 2017 a conference was organized in Annapolis, Maryland called "Keeping History Above Water" (keep the story above the water).It was dedicated to solutions for historical preservation and cultural resources. En agosto 2017 Backhouse y los semínolas participaron en la Tidally United Summit (Cumbre de los Unificados por la Marea), el cual fue copatrocinado con FPAN y el Foro Global Indígena de la Universidad Florida International.The summit focused on the relationship between climate science and historical resources.

Meanwhile, Ayers-Rigsby is sensitive to emerging ravages that are being displayed with people and properties due to storms and floods."You have to think about the human aspect in the present," he says."You have to prioritize the safety and sustenance of people.Obviously archeology and historical resources are necessarily secondary to that, but they must still be discussed ”.

It is already painful enough to put a price on a property - cars, cars, neighborhoods - that we will lose in the fight with the waves.And it will be a fight against the current to promote residents and authorities towards the level of abstraction that is required to live in the reign of forecasts and the best calculations. “Un riesgo en el futuro se siente mucho menos tenebroso que un riesgo que se presenta ahora mismo”, le dijo David Ropeik —un experto en la percepción de riesgos— a mi colega Laura Bliss en 2015.Even in Florida - where volatile time is undeniable - it requires a few mental maromas to turn around an understanding of the sites that are at stake ... sometimes literally under the surface.

But if the goal of archeology is to preserve and interpret the past for the future, there is a lot.In those strata are testimonies of lived, forgotten and remembered lives along millennia: a record of what has meant being human.

Regardless of what is done, says Ayers-Rigsby The time capsule will be incomplete."Some things will be lost forever".

This article was originally published in English in CityLab.com.