Archaeological Landscapes and Cultural Heritage Management in Marginalized Communities in the British West Indies

As an archaeologist working throughout the British West Indies for the past several years, I have found myself drawn to roads less frequently traveled. While conducting surveys and excavations on behalf of various government and non-government agencies such as the Antiquities, Monuments and Museums Corporation of The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos National Trust, I soon discovered that a void existed in the dialogue between archaeologists and the communities in which they worked, particularly between archaeologists and those who had been historically marginalized, namely those of African Caribbean descent. It appeared as though people whose ancestors had arrived as enslaved Africans were being excluded from the management of their own heritage resources historically and contemporarily. In order to determine the degree to which archaeologists included or excluded African Caribbean communities and associated archaeological sites from the cultural resource management process, I conducted a close examination of the activities of archaeologists. Two questions had to be addressed. First, were the histories and heritage of those with ancestral ties to sites being surveyed and excavated being taken into consideration in the cultural resource management process? Second, were the histories of colonialists being defined as uncontestable, with little or no regard for the experiences of African Caribbean communities?

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US Cultural Resource Management and the ICAHM Charter

Antiquity ◽

10.1017/s0003598x00045543 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 67 (255) ◽

pp. 426-438 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Ricardo J. Elia

Keyword(s):

Resource Management ◽

United States Of America ◽

The United States ◽

Cultural Resource Management ◽

Heritage Management ◽

Management Systems ◽

Cultural Resource ◽

Archaeological Heritage ◽

The World ◽

Archaeological Heritage Management

The ICAHM Charter for the Protection and Management of the Archaeological Heritage was developed to serve as an international statement of principles and guidelines relevant to archaeological resources (Lund 1989: 15-17]. The need for such a document is great: even a brief survey of archaeological heritage management systems throughout the world (e.g. Cleere 1984; 1989) reveals that no nation currently offers adequate protection to its archaeological heribage. To varying degrees, all nations fall short of realizing the ideals espoused in the Charter. The United States of America, despite having highly developed preservation legislation, regulations and procedures, a full-blown archaeological bureaucracy and more than 20 years of experience in cultural resource management, is no exception.

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Cultural Resource Management

Anthropology ◽

10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0104 ◽

2015 ◽

Author(s):

Patrick H. Garrow

Keyword(s):

Resource Management ◽

Cultural Heritage ◽

National Parks ◽

Large Scale ◽

The United States ◽

Cultural Resource Management ◽

Heritage Management ◽

Federal State ◽

Cultural Resources ◽

Cultural Resource

Cultural resource management, normally referred to as “CRM,” may be defined as cultural heritage management within a framework of federal, state, and local laws, regulations, and guidelines. Cultural heritage, in terms of cultural resource management, may be defined as those places, objects, structures, buildings, and evidence of past material culture and life that are important to understanding, appreciating, or preserving the past. CRM is similar to heritage programs in other countries, but the term and practice of CRM as defined here is unique to the United States. America’s concern with cultural resources was reflected early in the 20th century with passage of the American Antiquities Act of 1906, which authorized the president to establish national monuments of federally owned or controlled properties, and for the secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture, and the Army to issue permits for investigations of archaeological sites and objects on lands they controlled. The National Park Service was created in 1916 and assumed responsibility for cultural resources associated with national parks and monuments. Archaeology played a prominent role in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and other relief programs during the Great Depression, and large-scale investigations that employed thousands were conducted across the country. Cultural resource management, as it is currently practiced, was a product of the environmental movement of the 1960s, when federal cultural resources were given the same level of protection as elements of the natural environment, such as wetlands and protected plant and animal species. Cultural resource management deals with a range of resource types, and the breadth of the field will be reflected in the discussions that follow.

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Significance and Other Frustrations in the CRM Process

American Antiquity ◽

10.1017/s0002731600067810 ◽

1987 ◽

Vol 52 (4) ◽

pp. 820-829 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

William B. Butler

Keyword(s):

Resource Management ◽

Research Design ◽

Predictive Modeling ◽

Cultural Resource Management ◽

Federal Agencies ◽

State Agencies ◽

Management Process ◽

National Register ◽

Cultural Resource ◽

Collection Strategies

National Register of Historic Places criterion (d) for significance is based solely on the theoretical and substantive knowledge of the discipline. Archaeologists continue to misuse and abuse the term and do not understand its meaning in terms of the cultural resource management process. In so doing, archaeologists often place federal agencies and state historic preservation offices in a quandary as to proper management decisions. Misuse of the concept of significance in the formulation of a research design may seriously jeopardize or curtail making important contributions to the discipline. In addition, the failure to understand the concept of significance may not provide the basis for rational decisions concerning data redundancy, collection strategies, predictive modeling, and mitigation. Problems are compounded when archaeologists employed by federal and state agencies do not understand significance and the cultural resource management process.

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Assembling Archaeology

10.1093/oso/9780198784258.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Hannah Cobb ◽

Karina Croucher

Keyword(s):

Resource Management ◽

Undergraduate Student ◽

Teaching Practice ◽

Cultural Resource Management ◽

First Century ◽

Cultural Resource ◽

Archaeological Practice ◽

Material Turn ◽

The Subject ◽

New Perspective

This book provides a radical rethinking of the relationships between teaching, researching, digging, and practicing as an archaeologist in the twenty-first century. The issues addressed here are global and are applicable wherever archaeology is taught, practiced, and researched. In short, this book is applicable to everyone from academia to cultural resource management (CRM), from heritage professional to undergraduate student. At its heart, it addresses the undervaluation of teaching, demonstrating that this affects the fundamentals of contemporary archaeological practice, and is particularly connected to the lack of diversity in disciplinary demographics. It proposes a solution which is grounded in a theoretical rethinking of our teaching, training, and practice. Drawing upon the insights from archaeology’s current material turn, and particularly Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of assemblages, this volume turns the discipline of archaeology into the subject of investigation, considering the relationships between teaching, practice, and research. It offers a new perspective which prompts a rethinking of our expectations and values with regard to teaching, training, and doing archaeology, and ultimately argues that we are all constantly becoming archaeologists.

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