Most settings in everyday life seem ordinary — your house, the office, a local restaurant you frequent after work. You never truly know, though, the entire history that surrounds the environments you visit. Archaeological rarities occasionally hide in the soil beneath these places, even popping up in people’s backyards.
Many of these artifacts strewn across the world are at risk of being lost to time, but there is a way they can be saved. Construction, climate change, and conflicts summon archaeologists to swiftly preserve cultural heritage in a practice called “rescue archaeology.”
What Is Rescue Archaeology?
The term “rescue archaeology” goes by several other labels: salvage archaeology, preventive archaeology, and others. It involves an excavation done before the start of construction in an area that contains significant cultural resources. This kind of archaeology calls for immediate action, unlike the deliberate pace of traditional, research-oriented excavations.
