Byways to the Past: An American Highway Archaeology Symposium

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Byways to the Past: An American Highway Archaeology Symposium," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Transportation agencies are among the primary sponsors of resource management archaeology in the United States. Millions of public dollars are expended annually on the identification, evaluation and study of archaeological sites ahead of the design and implementation of highway infrastructure. The scope of these projects ranges from very small reconnaissance efforts to massive data recovery excavations, and have produced new and valuable information on an astonishing variety of site types of every prehistoric and historic period. In the over four decades of highway archaeology, CRM practitioners have pioneered and perfected a variety of methodologies and research foci adapted to the demands and opportunities of highway and bridge projects. This symposium will highlight some of the best examples of recent highway archaeology, and address some of the future challenges presented by changes and expansion of highway infrastructure as we strive to save the past for the future.