There is a prevailing discourse in cultural heritage management which privileges the investigation, interpretation, and conservation of heritage sites by a small group of heritage experts (Smith 2006). However, some heritage experts are challenging this discourse and recommending alternative heritage principles such as multivocality, providing more public access to heritage sites, and encouraging non-heritage experts to define their own value and meaning of heritage (Smith and Wobst 2006a; Liebmann and Rizvi 2008). Such alternative discourses are gaining the attention of heritage management authorities, but there has been no comprehensive comparative analysis of case studies where alternative heritage management principles are an integral part of the research design to determine whether they are successful and what characteristics of such projects are contributing to their success. A cross-case comparative analysis of eleven heritage management projects with a common goal of recording or monitoring sites threatened by climate change reveals that including principles from alternative heritage discourses is linked to better heritage management outcomes

Archaeological sites related to the first humans on North America's Pacific Coast may be preserved offshore, but finding those sites remains a challenge. Rising sea levels threaten to destroy near-shore sites, adding urgency to the question of how to find and preserve vulnerable cultural heritage resources. Current best-practices include reconstructing drowned landscapes as they were during possible human occupation. In chapter 3, we investigate the submerged San Dieguito river valley. Humans were nearby, on the Northern Channel Islands, by the time of the Younger Dryas, a thousand-year period of stable sea level and relatively cool temperatures. We use sub-bottom sonar and sediment cores to map the offshore extent of the river valley, and to gain insight into the local landscape during the Younger Dryas period. While our interpretations can be used to make predictions about human landscape use, it would be better to locate verifiable archaeological material. Chapter 1 lays some needed foundation for developing a reliable method to detect lithic (stone) artifacts during sub-bottom sonar surveys using their resonance properties. This method could augment surveys, like that of chapter 3, to include potential artifact deposits in the mapped landscapes. As we make efforts to use sound to preserve human heritage, we acknowledge that marine mammals have been using sound in the ocean for much longer. The noise humans add to the underwater soundscape could interfere with their daily activities. In chapter 2, we study the hearing mechanisms of whales, and use methods adapted from those in chapter 1 to measure the resonance properties of fin whale ear bones. Understanding how marine mammals hear can help us mitigate negative impacts from our methods, and learning how they use sound could even help us design more effective sonar instruments. In the three chapters combined, we study the ringing tones of stones, bones, and coastal zones to tune the protection of marine mammals and cultural heritage.

The application of environmental DNA (eDNA) methods in tropical environments has been limited due to assumptions of poor preservation of genomic material given drastic climate variations (high temperature, soil acidity, high precipitation). However, improvements in technologies and methods (Orlando et al 2021; Shapiro et al 2019; Rizzi et al 2012; Mumy et al 2004; Miller et al 1999) have made it possible to extract and sequence highly degraded DNA (aDNA) from some tropical environments, drastically changing our previous understanding of DNA preservation capacities. Addressing the need to reclaim material from archaeological collections, I visited the Paleogenomics lab at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) and performed DNA extraction experiments on sediment samples from three archaeological sites in Borikén (Puerto Rico) - Tierras Nuevas, Cueva María de la Cruz, and Puerto del Rey - in search of the presence of aDNA, and the levels of degradation they present. The ability to extract genomic material from tropical sediments, could provide high value proxy data to inquiry past climate, migration patterns, biomonitoring, and landscape formation processes, in addition to providing mitigation strategies to deal with the ongoing curation crisis exacerbated by the colonial system.

As climate change occurs rapidly, communities affected by it are desperately seeking answers and hope for the future. They face questions about how it will look, how the marine ecosystem will resist, and how we can adapt. This dissertation examines past examples in the Caribbean, especially in Puerto Rico, where indigenous societies faced changes similar to the present to answer some of the current communities’ questions. Even though contemporary and past societies may not be directly comparable, the deep historical and time perspective used in archaeology can provide valuable data to present problems. By using the Anthtoposystem/ Socio-ecological framework, it was possible to organize the data in the abiotic, biotic, and cultural context with an awareness of scales and produce data to examine the impact of climate change and sudden atmospheric events on their environments and the associated subsistence and residential practices of coastal societies in the Caribbean (Puerto Rico) whose marine ecosystems represent their primary source of food or economy. As a result, it was possible to identify the effects of the Medieval Climate Anomaly around 900-1000 CE on the Caribbean and how the coral reef could have been affected. Additionally, it was possible to identify fishing traditions that helped conserve the fish communities near the archaeological sites. This represents a novel result for the island of Puerto Rico and the coral restoration projects in the area. It helps identify a coral reef zone that can be categorized as sentinel containing a possible genetic variation resistant to coral bleaching. Thus giving hope to the communities of security of fishing banks in the region.