TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 542: Evaluating Cultural Resource Significance: Implementation Tools examines information technology (IT) tools that are designed to improve and streamline the National Register evaluation of cultural resources. The report highlights IT prototype tools that include a searchable database of historic contexts and a collection of National Register evaluation documents. The second prototype provides an explicit, but flexible tool designed to improve the National Register eligibility determinations.
Assessing Site Significance is an invaluable resource for archaeologists and others who need guidance in determining whether sites are eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Because the register's eligibility criteria were largely developed for standing sites, it is difficult to know in any particular case whether a site known primarily through archaeological work has sufficient 'historical significance' to be listed. Hardesty and Little address these challenges, describing how to file for NRHP eligibility and how to determine the historical significance of archaeological properties. This second edition brings everything up to date, and includes new material on 17th- and 18th-century sites, traditional cultural properties, shipwrecks, Japanese internment camps, and military properties.
"This digest summarizes the results of NCHRP Project 8-40, 'Evaluating cultural resource significance using information technology.' ... based on a draft final report prepared by Terry H. Klein ... [et al.] of URS Corporation ..."--P. [1].
Cultural resource management is a new and vital field that has come about as a result of intensified federal efforts to identify, evaluate, and manage cultural resources as an element of the environment. Anthropologists, sociologists, historians, folklorists, planners, and others have had to pool their talents and knowledge to properly respond to n
This publication offers a broad, analytical review of the literature concerned with the challenging subject of evaluating cultural resource significance. This review of significance includes two main sections: (a) and Annotated Bibliography (consisting mostly of peer-reviewed literature), and (b) an Analysis Section (devoted to tracing historical trends in archaeological method and theory). The literature summarized here is extensive and is not accessible widely to the archeological and cultural resource management (CRM) communities. After analyzing a wide range of publications, 21 major themes or concepts were established to characterize the breadth of archaeological views and ideas about significance. A review of each theme was undertaken, including both a discussion and a graphical presentation of trends through time. Systematic indexing and cross-referencing of publications, authors, and significance themes have also been carried out to assist users in locating references of special interest. The concluding section offers some suggestions and insights into the future direction of significance evaluation with respect to the work unit and within CRM generally. Particular emphasis is placed on the opportunities to develop more holistic management strategies, to make greater use of new approaches and technologies, and to use more explicit evaluation methods.
These essays urge archaeologists to reexamine and to change their basic assumptions about how we assign value to cultural places and, beyond that, how we should understand and manage our heritage throughout much of the world. At the heart of the complex field of cultural resource management is the work archaeologists do to determine the significance of a particular site. On a daily basis, they often face the question of what should be protected for future generations, salvaged in the face of impending destruction, or allowed to be destroyed without record. Frequently, their assessments are at odds with segments of society whose culturally conditioned values conflict with the practical management of resources. The book addresses such topical issues as public controversy over national memorials, land ownership, repatriation, and the protection of cultural heritage in war and peace. It sets the concerns of native peoples and minorities in the context of worldwide tensions between national and local identities, and it explores the overt goal of many countries to promote and appreciate cultural diversity. It also addresses the philosophical separation of heritage management and research within the archaeological discipline itself. The contributors propose that in both developing and developed nations the theoretical underpinning of policies must be examined, and new preservation, protection, and research strategies must be developed. Drawing on a broad base of international expertise, the book highlights new theoretical and pragmatic approaches to archaeological value and significance being applied currently by professionals in North America, Europe, Africa, South America, and Australia. The book raises concerns of interest not only to archaeologists but also to those in law, politics, anthropology, environmental studies, and related fields. It revives the critical debate concerning significance and value while emphasizing innovations in both theory and practice in what has become in the 21st century an increasingly diverse discipline. Clay Mathers is the geographic information systems coordinator for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Albuquerque District, New Mexico. He is the coeditor of Trends and Patterns in Cultural Resource Significance, Cultural Resource Significance Evaluation, and Development and Decline in the Mediterranean Bronze Age.
