New Perspectives on Heritage Protection: Accomplishing Goals

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "New Perspectives on Heritage Protection: Accomplishing Goals," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The forum entitled "New Perspectives on Heritage Protection" presented at the 2018 Society for American Archaeology (SAA) meeting identified several potential ways to better achieve the important goal of heritage protection. First, archaeologists need to communicate more effectively with the public, land managers, law enforcement officers and prosecutors about the importance and relevance of heritage protection. Second, all archaeologists should cooperate fully with law enforcement officers and prosecutors in protecting these resources, even when this is not their primary professional interest. Third, innovative legal strategies to protect heritage resources, beyond the use of standard approaches such as prosecution under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, should be considered. Finally, the SAA and other professional organizations with an ethical commitment to the protection of heritage resources and their members should be actively engaged in the protection of these resources. In this electronic symposium, representatives of stakeholders in heritage protection will consider how these goals might be accomplished.