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The Deep Time Commons:
A Collaborative Resource for Historical Ecology & Archaeology
About:
The Deep Time Commons is HAR’s dedicated research hub designed to advance archaeological inquiry and historical ecological analysis through crowdsourced knowledge and interdisciplinary collaboration. This dynamic platform serves as a bridge between field archaeology, cultural resource management, and environmental research, offering a growing repository of identification tools, archival materials, and analytical datasets.
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Resources:
Background Research & Literature Review Tools:
These historical research tools include various maps, indexes, and archival records in one convenient place. Coming soon!
The HAR Leafy Legacies Database: for Site Plant Indicators:
The Leafy Legacies Database is a living archive of ecological memory, tracing the entanglements between archaeological sites and surface vegetation patterns. Built from crowdsourced observations, it refines our ability to see landscapes not just as static remnants but as dynamic conversations between past human activity and evolving plant communities. These overlooked botanical signals—volunteer species sprouting from industrial ruins, tenacious greenery staking claims in forgotten burial grounds—offer an interpretive key to reading the long-term imprints of land use. As submissions grow, so too does the potential to test site-vegetation relationships and refine predictive models. Ultimately, this work will shape anthropogenic plant guides, providing archaeologists with practical tools to decipher the vegetal fingerprints of historical disturbance and resilience.
The Remnant Ecology Project:
The Remnant Ecology Project uncovers the layered recent histories of landscapes shaped by human presence—spaces where past interventions ripple into present ecological adaptation. This contemporary archaeological citizen science initiative traces the imprints of industry, memory, and disturbance across forgotten cemeteries, extraction sites, and industrial ruins, revealing the entangled relationship between material culture and biodiversity shifts. Through community contributions, we build an archive of overlooked places, where nature persists in conversation with human-made environments. These findings provide critical insight for sustainability research, historical ecological analysis, and policy discussions, sharpening our collective ability to recognize, interpret, and engage with the ecological memory embedded in the world around us.
The Verdant Memory Index: Tree Core & Lichenometry References
The Verdant Memory Index is a clearinghouse for dendrochronological and lichenometric studies, documenting tree cores near historic sites and cemeteries alongside lichen growth on headstones, monuments, and ruins.
Preservationists can record biological growth before removal, strengthening dating methods for otherwise undatable features, including living cultural markers—commemorative trees, culturally bent specimens, and grave markers.
By systematically collecting this data, we refine non-invasive heritage dating, protect overlooked sites, and recognize the deep-time clues clinging to stone and wood.