Received: 2 August 2022 | Revised: 19 January 2023 | Accepted: 7 February 2023 DOI: 10.1002/gea.21958 RESEARCH ARTICLE Characterising mine wastes as archaeological landscapes Susan Lawrence 1 | Peter Davies 1 | Greg Hil 1 | Ian Rutherfurd 2 | James Grove 2 | Jodi Turnbull 1 | Ewen Silvester 3 | Francesco Colombi 3 | Mark Macklin 4 1 Department of Archaeology and History, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia 2 School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Science, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia 3 Centre for Freshwater Ecology, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia 4 Centre for Water and Planetary Health, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK Correspondence Peter Davies, Department of Archaeology and History, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. Email: peter.davies@latrobe.edu.au Scientific editing by Sarah Sherwood Funding information Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Grant/Award Number: M14284; Australian Research Council, Grant/Award Number: DP160100799 Abstract Industrial‐scale metal mining has long been a feature of developing economies. Processing ores to recover minerals has generated large quantities of waste rock, tailings and contaminants. Mining‐related deposits, along with associated soil and water geochemistry, river modifications and other environmental changes, are a product of the nature, scale and intensity of past operations. These artefacts of historical mining create anthropogenic landscapes that extend far beyond individual sites due to the dispersal of mine waste by rivers and pose enduring threats to human and ecosystem health. Their presence and significance, however, are often overlooked by heritage and environmental managers. To be acknowl- edged as artefacts of the historical mining industry, landscape features must be identified and characterised with reference to the human activities that triggered their formation. This requires an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates anthropogenic landscape change at a regional scale. In this paper, we integrate archaeological, geomorphological and geochemical evidence to identify and analyse mining‐related changes to the Loddon River valley in Victoria, Australia. Nineteenth‐century gold mining caused extensive erosion of creeks and gullies and mobilised sediments that filled channels and spread over floodplains. In addition, tailing deposits concentrated arsenic at levels significantly above environmental background conditions. Recognising these legacies of historical mining is vital to understanding mining heritage and to managing healthy rivers, environments and communities. KEYWORDS archaeosphere, industrial archaeology, landscape archaeology, legacy sediments, mine waste, rivers Geoarchaeology. 2023;1–17. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/gea | 1 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. © 2023 The Authors. Geoarchaeology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. 15206548, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gea.21958 by NHMRC National Cochrane Australia, Wiley Online Library on [05/03/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License