Reinvigorating the National Register: Toward Multivocality in the Production of National Histories

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Collaborative and Community Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Most American archaeology is driven by the proverbial goal of listing properties on the National Register of Historic Places. As the comprehensive “list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of protection,” the National Register is a prestigious means of creating and memorializing our national history. After almost 55 years of implementation, archaeologists’ role in this process has become deeply routinized. The register and its attendant eligibility criteria are rightly critiqued for privileging the scientific value of archaeological sites over cultural, historical, and social values, which often disproportionately silences Native American voices. In this paper, we argue that archaeologists have an underappreciated means of circumventing these issues. One of the National Register’s most pervasive and fundamental concepts—the “historic context”—remains deeply undertheorized compared to more familiar terms like “significance” and “integrity.” As the frameworks through which all other evaluations of eligibility are evaluated, thoughtful production of multiple historic contexts can be used to capture multiple value systems. Using an example from the multivocal nomination of the Inscription Rock Archaeological District as a case study, we argue that historic context concept can be used to commemorate multivocality, moving from one National History to the production of multivocal national histories.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Collaborative and Community Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33300