Dr. Brian Bates of the Longwood University Department of Archaeology will discuss archaeological sites along the Mathews County shoreline at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Kingston Parish House, Mathews. The public is invited.

Forrest Morgan of the Mathews County Historical Society said that, under a Hurricane Sandy-funded grant, Bates and his team were appointed to conduct a study designed to determine the impact of environmental change on the shoreline as it affects archaeological sites.

In a press release from Morgan, Bates wrote that the Chesapeake Bay, which is one of the largest marine estuaries in the world, “serves as a microcosm of the forces of shoreline environmental change such as sea level rise, land subsidence and erosion.” He said it also serves to show the impacts that such changes have on the archaeological record.

Bates’s study used shoreline analysis, empirical observations and predictive modeling to try to understand what those impacts are and to determine p...