The Challenges of Dealing with Human Remains in Cultural Resource Management

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Powless ◽  
Carolyn Freiwald
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Resource Management ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Cultural Resource Management ◽  
Lead Author ◽  
Cultural Resource ◽  
Community Agencies ◽  
The Past ◽  
And Training

AbstractOver the past few years, the lead author has had the opportunity to excavate multiple large sites in California, working on behalf of developers to keep their projects in compliance with their permits. She also worked in conjunction with local tribes to resolve burial issues with each excavation. During these excavations, she observed the challenges that the tribes encountered when dealing with fast-paced cultural resource management (CRM) projects where burial retrieval and a shortage of resources were the norm. For many years, archaeologists have viewed CRM as only dealing with the material culture of the past; however, archaeologists also consult and work with living cultures. This article will address the endemic problem in CRM that stems from a lack of planning, preparation, resources, and training and how it affects the burial excavations that archaeologists and tribes encounter in the CRM setting. It will also look for solutions to remedy a long-broken system that continues to ignore existing laws set in place to protect resources, as well as the relationships between the Native American community, agencies, researchers, and land developers.

scholarly journals Book Reviews: Thinking About Cultural Resource Management: Essays From the Edge

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Cast
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Resource Management ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Historic Preservation ◽  
Cultural Resource Management ◽  
Cultural Resource ◽  
Federal Laws ◽  
National Environmental

The Guru of Section 106 has just compiled a book of essays that every CRM professional, archeologist, anthropologist, historic preservationist, environmentalist (have I covered all the pertinent “ists”?), and Native Americans concerned with preserving, protecting, and managing historic properties should read. There is even a nifty glossary of terms for those readers who may not be familiar with the compliance lingo that goes along with Section 106, the National Environmental Protection Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and the whole host of other federal laws related to historic preservation.

scholarly journals The Site Tour

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-216
Author(s):  
Carol J. Ellick
Keyword(s):  
Resource Management ◽  
Archaeological Site ◽  
Cultural Resource Management ◽  
Public Outreach ◽  
Years Of Experience ◽  
Cultural Resource ◽  
School Directors ◽  
The Past ◽  
Field School

AbstractArchaeological site tours are a common form of public outreach, but are they done as well as possible? Do they convey the information that is intended and are they effective in teaching about archaeology, culture, professionalism, and ethics? Over the years, I’ve been asked by cultural resource management (CRM) firms and university anthropology department field school directors for information on how to construct and give site tours. In the past, responding to this request meant cobbling together information from various sources and adding commentary. The intent of this article is to bring all of that information, along with 25-plus years of experience, together into one comprehensive narrative with the intention of providing guidance for those who have trepidations about offering site tours as a form of public outreach.

Contemporary Archaeology in the Postcolony

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Shepherd
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Resource Management ◽  
Salient Feature ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Cultural Resource Management ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Cultural Resource ◽  
Contemporary Archaeology ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Epistemic Violence

A salient feature of contemporary contexts of practice is that disciplinary archaeology no longer holds a monopoly on driving intellectual agendas and on the formation of theory. New and challenging forms of theorization are emerging among social movements mobilized around archaeological/sacred sites, material cultures, and human remains. At the same time, disciplinary archaeology has increasingly moved in the direction of cultural resource management, an instrumentalized form of practice framed by a set of largely unquestioned protocols and procedures. This chapter poses a series of questions around the meanings and implications of doing archaeology in and on the contemporary world, so that its point of focus becomes the discipline itself. In what ways do local, subaltern, and fugitive knowledges and regimes of care cause us to rethink and reimagine key disciplinary ideas and practices? In what ways do they challenge us to think about the forms of epistemic violence that lie at the heart of disciplinary regimes of care in archaeology? How, in a spirit of humility, openness, and listening, do we begin a conversation about the things that each of us know? And what sort of archaeology might be the result? The chapter considers these questions from the perspective of the global south, and a set of subaltern struggles framed as a challenge to disciplinary thinking and a discourse on heritage. It aims to explore particular forms of disciplinary entrapments, and the subaltern epistemologies which offer fresh openings and ways out of a certain kind of uncreative assertion of discipline.

Legislating the past: Cultural resource management in the U.S. forest service

1996 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grace A. Wang ◽  
Dorothy H. Anderson ◽  
Pamela J. Jakes
Keyword(s):  
Resource Management ◽  
Forest Service ◽  
Cultural Resource Management ◽  
Cultural Resource ◽  
The Past ◽  
The U.S

Public Archaeology

Anthropology ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy A. Sabloff
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Resource Management ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Resource Management ◽  
Public Archaeology ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Cultural Resource ◽  
Museum Exhibits ◽  
Key Aspects

Public archaeology refers to those aspects of the broad field of archaeology that relate to the public interest. It has a number of key aspects, but perhaps the most significant in the United States are cultural resource management and communication with various community groups and public audiences about the practice of archaeology. Cultural Resource Management (CRM) is the set of practices that derive from fulfilling the mandates of heritage protection laws. In the United States, a number of statutes could be cited, but the principal statutes in this regard are the National Historic Preservation Act (and particularly Section 106 of the law) and the National Environmental Protection Act, as well as the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act. In regard to communication, there are a wide variety of communication avenues. One form of outreach involves the active engagement among archaeologists and various publics. This kind of engaged outreach has been labeled “Community Archaeology” or “action archaeology.” Elsewhere, I have defined the latter, for instance, as “involvement or engagement with the problems facing the modern world through archaeology.” This means that archaeologists are “working for living communities, not just in or near them.” Other forms of outreach are not as engaged but nevertheless are quite important. Such outreach includes communication through lectures, newspaper and magazine articles, television, movies, museum exhibits, and Internet blogs, among others.

Archaeology, communication, and multiple stakeholders: From the other side of the Big Pond

2007 ◽  
Vol 10 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 167-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet E. Levy
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Resource Management ◽  
North American ◽  
Effective Communication ◽  
Cultural Resource Management ◽  
The Other ◽  
Multiple Stakeholders ◽  
Cultural Resource ◽  
American Archaeology ◽  
North American Archaeology

This article reviews discussions and debates about effective communication within North American archaeology. The development of cultural resource management and the expansion of Native American control over archaeology have both influenced the practice and communication of archaeology. The concept of diverse stakeholders derives from discussions about ethics in archaeology, but is relevant to understanding the complexities of archaeological communication. Rather than focus on criticisms of archaeological communication, various examples of effective communication are provided.

A Cultural Resource Management Dilemma: Anasazi Ruins and the Navajos

1983 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 594-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Barry Holt
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
New Mexico ◽  
Resource Management ◽  
Adverse Effects ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Energy Development ◽  
Cultural Resource Management ◽  
San Juan ◽  
Cultural Resource ◽  
San Juan Basin

Archaeologists recently have been focusing increased attention on Native American concerns and archaeology. However, some serious issues of Native American attitudes toward the activities of archaeology have so far been overlooked. For example, in the San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico, archaeological activities that have been spurred by energy development violate certain tenets of the Navajo Way of living, with possible adverse effects. Suggestions for the mitigation of these effects are presented as a way of expanding the dialogue between archaeologists and Native American communities, in order to identify and resolve such ethical dilemmas.

It is Good that You are Listening: The Dynamics of Native American Cultural Resource Management

1998 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 31-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip Minthorn
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Resource Management ◽  
Cultural Resource Management ◽  
Cultural Preservation ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Native Community ◽  
Cultural Resource ◽  
Resource Managers ◽  
Norms And Values ◽  
Dominant Society

Cultural preservation laws are concerned with the protection of the archaeological record for humanistic and scientific purposes. However, as Native American leaders, scholars, cultural resource managers, and archaeologists become increasingly engaged in cultural preservation issues and assume the legal responsibilities of cultural resource management (CRM), they soon realize that federal and state cultural preservation laws do more to promote the norms and values of the dominant society than it does of indigenous culture. As a consequence, the Native community finds itself immersed in a form of community-centered advocacy that not only seeks to educate federal agencies with whom they work but to show that the application of law, despite its limitations, should be proactive in its approach in protecting and managing Native American cultural resources.

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