UNIVERSITY NEWS
Daria Nikitina
Heather Wholey
National Geographic Funding
WCU Archeologist and Geologist on Delaware Bay Shoreline
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ising sea levels triggered by climate change aren’t just threatening beachfront properties and coastal cities, but ecologically rich salt marshes and thousands of archeological sites as well. To assess those dangers throughout the Delaware Bay, WCU archeologist Heather Wholey and geologist Daria Nikitina have been awarded a two-year, $30,000 National Geographic Explorers Grant. “This is a global issue,” says Wholey, an archeologist, professor of anthropology, and chair of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology. “Researchers throughout the world are concerned about the loss of environmental habitats, the loss of historical and archeological sites, and all of the scientific information that comes with that.” Supported by a WCU Foundation Grant for Faculty and Student Research, last year the duo and their graduate and undergraduate students conducted a pilot research project on Sheppards Island, a dryland hummock amidst the salt marshes of Delaware’s Milford Neck Wildlife Area. Nikitina, an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences, extracted soil core samples from the adjacent marshlands that indicate the hummock once was a barrier island with dunes and a beach. Meanwhile, on the wooded hummock itself, Wholey found evidence of so far undated but
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clearly prehistoric human habitation: chipped debris of jasper, a type of rock that was commonly used to make tools and weapons. With evidence of human habitation dating back 13,000 years, the Delaware Bay (North America’s second largest estuary) was one of the most culturally diverse areas in colonial America. Its inhabitants included Lenape and Nanticoke Native Americans, Swedes, Dutch, Finns, and Africans. The new funding enables the two professors to expand their research to at least six more wildlife management areas on both the Delaware and New Jersey sides of the bay. Their goals: to identify areas of undocumented human occupation; unearth connections between human settlement and coastal environments; assess the current impact of rising sea levels and storm surges on those resources; and predict future risks. “Even if we identify cultural resources, it’s impossible to save everything,” notes Nikitina. “But it’s important to know what those resources are and to prioritize their vulnerability.” “If we’re at least able to document these sites, even if they are not saved they will become part of our collective knowledge and history,” adds Wholey.
