California Archaeological Site Stewardship Program (CASSP)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Site Stewardship Matters: Comparing and Contrasting Site Stewardship Programs to Advance Our Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

There are many ways to organize and administer site stewardship. We highlight some characteristics of California site stewardship and we discuss why they matter. CASSP is provided by Partners for Archaeological Site Stewardship, a private, nonprofit organization. Because CASSP is not a government program, it may more effectively engage a diverse audience: one that includes people who are antagonistic or disappointed with governmental decisions, and one that includes people who belong to organizations or groups that normally do not work with government agencies. CASSP provides from two to eight training workshops a year throughout California. CASSP requires the local agency archaeologist to direct the trained volunteers. A focus on community cultural resources makes people more aware of the archaeological resources around them and helps build a local constituency for site protection. CASSP workshops provide instructions for site stewards but many, if not most, participants do not become site stewards. So the workshops also provide cultural resource awareness, by including Native American speakers and discussing the importance of archaeology and by including law enforcement officers and discussing safety and legal protections. Each participant receives a workshop notebook with archaeological background and contact information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Site Stewardship Matters: Comparing and Contrasting Site Stewardship Programs to Advance Our Practice   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36955.0