Preserving Our Vanishing Treasures: 20 Years of Collaboration, Community Building, Traditional Craft and Conservation Science

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Vanishing Treasures Program: Celebrating 20 Years of National Park Service Historic Preservation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Vanishing Treasures Program of the National Park Service is a multi-regional effort that supports the preservation of cultural heritage in the Western United States; facilitates the perpetuation of traditional skills through staff-, youth- and partner-focused training; and promotes connections between culturally associated communities and places of their heritage. Comprised of a network of NPS preservation experts and partners, VT strives to address critical preservation needs using both traditional and modern approaches.

For over 20 years, Vanishing Treasures has been working to preserve some of the most significant and fragile cultural heritage in the western United States. Beginning in the 1990's as a grassroots effort to address deficiencies in staffing and funding needed to effectively preserve cultural heritage extant in parks in the arid west, and expanding in the 2010's to support this work across three regions of the National Park Service, VT has been a model of collaboration, adaptation, partnership, and action. This session will focus on introducing the VT Program, as will it provide an overview of the impact that the program has had over the course of its existence on parks, staff, partners, and, most importantly, the resources that we preserve and protect.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Vanishing Treasures Program: Celebrating 20 Years of National Park Service Historic Preservation   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24928