Indifference, Inertia, Limited Budgets, and Preservation: Insights from Site Stewardship Programs

Summary

Archaeological sites are fragile and non-renewable, but how do we protect them from visitors, development projects, and natural processes that are accelerated by climate change? People are interested in reports of new archaeological discoveries, but they don’t know -- or care -- about local archaeological resources, and publicizing them is restricted by confidentiality requirements. Government agencies are charged with protecting archaeological resources, but they do not have enough resources to fulfill this mandate. Often, one agency archaeologist must manage districts covering thousands of acres that contain a large quantity of historic and prehistoric resources. There are new threats to archaeological sites, but people and organizations are slow to adopt new responses. Archaeologists, professors, and consultants are hired to get the "job done" (analyze project impacts, teach archaeology, evaluate the site) but not necessarily on how to preserve or protect archaeological sites. This report discusses some of the methods that site stewardship programs use to meet these challenges.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage