"A More Difficult Problem:" Adapting the National Park Service Concept of Significance to Archaeological Sites

Author(s): John H. Sprinkle

Year: 2016

Summary

First published in 1969, the National Register criteria were based on a thirty year track record of administrative review and historical evaluation by a National Park Service program whose mandate was to deter, deflect, and discourage the acquisition of new parks proposed for addition to a system already burdened with maintenance backlog issues. But the goal of the "new preservation" was never to acquire and interpret a comprehensive panorama of the American experiment; its mission was to ensure that due consideration was given to historic places in managing the change that was to come in the last decades of the twentieth century. Application of the National Register critieria to archaeological properties continued to be "a more dificult problem" within the context of the expansion of the program after the mid-1960s. 

Cite this Record

"A More Difficult Problem:" Adapting the National Park Service Concept of Significance to Archaeological Sites. John H. Sprinkle. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Washington, D.C. 2016 ( tDAR id: 435015)

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 62