LIFE ON THE EDGE: The Archeologist, the Oil Rig, and the Newfoundlander

• Main Author: Coughlan, Zachary Michael
• Format: Thesis
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: L'Anse aux Meadows; Newfoundland
• Online Access: https://curve.carleton.ca/f42d60af-f00e-4ea1-b77f-e86e41d30df4; https://doi.org/10.22215/etd/2020-14055; https://ocul-crl.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01OCUL_CRL/j2o5om/alma991022781826605153

This thesis reimagines the UNESCO archeological site of L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland in 2101; one year past the limit of current climate science predictions. In this projective future, the now obsolete infrastructures of Newfoundland and Labrador's offshore oil rigs are moved near-to-shore. The rigs are slowly and incrementally deconstructed, now serving as monumental scrapyards and material salvage pantries for a new working landscape on Newfoundland's coast. Salvaged components shore up and transform the terrain, community and cultural heritage of the site and its immediate surroundings. This research by design project engages with questions of monumentality, counter-monumentality, and changing heritage through critical and speculative drawings and maps in a back-and-forth between water, landscape and the possibilities of a reconstituted future. The thesis attempts to grapple with the often fraught and complex histories - and futures - of resource extraction and cultural heritage in a changing life on the edge.