We are excited to announce the publication of the project archive for CITiZAN: the Coastal and Intertidal Zone Archaeological Network Archive.
CITiZAN is a community archaeology and citizen science project that was set up to address the daily risks that the UK coastline faces, whether from winds, waves and tidal scour or increasingly, due to the climate crisis, from sea level rise and winter storms. The project aims to raise awareness of these threats and train local communities to better identify and record this heritage. As part of this project CITiZAN developed a coastal archaeology smartphone app and interactive website that allowed trained CITiZAN volunteers and other coastal users to rapidly record fragile coastal heritage and monitor changes to this region from erosion and storm damage.
The Archive
The dataset contains the full CITiZAN database as well as images of coastal heritage sites from across the UK; from Bristol to the Tees Valley. These datasets cover all heritage types and periods from submerged prehistoric forests to Second World War pillboxes.
The CITiZAN dataset contains almost 6,000 images of archaeological features around England’s coast, making it one of the largest collections of intertidal archaeology surveys carried out by citizen scientists in England. The dataset contains a valuable record of part of our country’s history, which is extremely vulnerable to the climate crisis. Without the work of these dedicated volunteers, many of these sites would have vanished with no record.
In addition to these citizen collected information, data from two detailed coastline surveys are available from the foreshore of Sandwich Bay, Kent (https://doi.org/10.5284/1118187) and Tobacco Cliffs, Formby Beach, Sefton, Merseyside (https://doi.org/10.5284/1118188).
This data is moderated by our archaeologists from the CITiZAN project and submitted to ADS on a regular basis. Watch this space for further updates.
The Unpath Portal
CITiZAN’s archaeology dataset has now also gone live on the Unpath’d Waters portal, a shared and cross-searchable online catalogue of marine data from across the UK.
Find out more about the Portal from this News post on the ADS website.
You can explore the archaeology of the tidal area on the Unpath’d Waters portal by filtering your search terms by ‘Citizan’. This search can be accessed by clicking the image below:
CITiZAN is managed by MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) and is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, and support from the National Trust, the Crown Estate, Historic England and the Lloyds Register Foundation.
How to cite:
CITiZAN, Museum of London Archaeology (2024) CITiZAN: the Coastal and Intertidal Zone Archaeological Network [data-set]. York: Archaeology Data Service [distributor] https://doi.org/10.5284/1116909
