New Perspectives in Cultural Resource Management, by Francis P. McManamon, ed.

Abstract

This volume is largely a compilation of papers and reflections delivered in a symposium at the 2014 Society for American Archaeology annual meeting in Austin, Texas. This was an enlightening symposium that I was lucky enough to attend and one of many retrospective sessions staged at various professional conferences around the nation to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act in 2016. Section 106 of the act is the enabling legislation for all resource management historical research and archaeology in the United States. Other significant portions of the Preservation Act and its implementing regulations established the network of State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPOs) and the National Register of Historic Places.This volume is valuable in many ways. While the focus is cultural resource management (CRM) archaeology, there is plenty here for readers with broader historic interests, especially if those interests include the role of history and science in government and public programs. The specific utility of this publication for CRM practitioners will likely depend on their age and on where and how they work.The book has four sections. Part 1 is a history of CRM that charts the origins and general development of the regulatory framework, and how agencies, the private sector, and the profession responded to it. William Lipe's chapter on the enormous 1970s and ’80s-era Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation projects in the Southwest is especially interesting, and Frank McManamon's high-elevation overview of the evolution of CRM was written from the perspective of someone who was around for a lot of it, especially in the ’80s and ’90s. In all the papers in the section, there are at least hints at the origins of the challenges, tensions, and sometimes out-and-out antipathy that characterize the academic versus CRM dynamic to the present day.Part 2 documents the program-specific history and state-of-the-art of CRM archaeology. The program areas include transportation, the Bureau of Land Management, SHPO, and state programs, tribal programs, and for-profit private sector development. Several big public-sector program areas weren't included and probably should have been—notably the CRM work conducted by the US Forest Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the National Park Service. It is also the case that one paper on private-sector CRM doesn't really deliver the full sense of the variety and differences in private-sector archaeology as one moves from the East (where many of the clients are other businesses and corporations), to the West, where the clients are often land-management agencies and federally recognized tribes. That said, these are all great papers written by practitioners with years of experience and perspective.Part 3, “CRM Challenges and Opportunities,” focuses on what the authors see as what's right and what's wrong with the current state-of-the-art. The complaints will be familiar to anyone who has done this sort of work for a while. These include the preponderance of gray literature, the crisis in collections management, the regulatory environment in some states and agencies, the competitive and ethical challenges of private-sector CRM, and the never-ending struggle of deciding what to save and study and what to walk away from. Heidi Roberts's paper on the archaeology of Barbie dolls is a well-written tour-de-force on a number of these issues. The papers highlight many important contributions CRM work is making and has made to our understanding of the past. There are discussions of summarizing and synthesizing decades of work and the role “Big Data” can play in that effort. The Corps of Engineers pioneering program of linking veterans, many of them disabled, with careers in collections management is highlighted. There is an exploration of the current effort to shift the care and study of the archaeological record away from the design of various kinds of specific infrastructure projects and to the planning of those projects, where broad trends in land use can be influenced and where the effects on heritage properties can be minimized. The many opportunities CRM archaeologists have for involving the public in their work are also discussed in this section.Part 4 consists of two summary and discussion papers that are both well worth reading. Lynne Sebastian's paper reprises her role as discussant in the 2014 symposium, and it's a lively and spot-on review of her perspective as a former state historic preservation officer, state archaeologist, advisory council member, and SAA past-president. For Dr. Sebastian, the biggest challenges and opportunities for CRM are both derived from the flexibility that the National Historic Preservation Act and its implementing regulations. In a plea she's made eloquently many times in the last fifteen years, she urges practitioners to strive for balance, common sense, and clarity in the public interest. It's advice well worth hearing and taking.The final summation, by Frank McManamon and Jerry Rodgers, echoes many of the issues Sebastian raises and points that are raised in many of the volume's other papers. It also identifies a very important issue not raised elsewhere: the aging demographics of CRM. As the baby-boomer cohort, the practitioners who really invented modern CRM archaeology, approach retirement, the profession is shrinking. Federal and state agencies everywhere are retracting, and not hiring as many archaeologists as they are losing. The large infrastructure projects of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s that spurred a need for CRM practitioners are increasingly rare as the public's views on the role and size of government have changed. This is affecting university enrollment, as is the price of tuition and the debt many students incur paying it. Tuition costs are also driving students to disciplines where the pay scale is better, for obvious and practical reasons. When the economy and public infrastructure expand again and require more and better efforts by the archaeological community to help manage public heritage, there will be fewer of us around to do it.Early in this review I noted that the utility of this volume for CRM practitioners will vary, depending on who is reading it. I suspect all agency archaeologists and private-sector consultants, and academics in history-related fields, will find much to think about and many good ideas to put into practice in this compilation. I would especially encourage young CRM archaeologists and historians to read it. There's a wonderful historical perspective here that should be a valuable resource for the next generation. An understanding of where the current practices came from, what good and ill they caused, and how they vary regionally and by program area, is a necessary precursor to the good work of making them better. In my capacity as the manager of a student-staffed internship program in CRM, I work with young archaeologists almost all the time now, and I know their character and potential first-hand. I have every confidence that the change they'll bring and are bringing to CRM will be welcome, and their accomplishments will be remarkable.