VAMPing Up Stewardship in the National Parks: Preliminary Lessons from the Volunteer Archeological Monitoring Program

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.

From 2021–2022, the Northeast Archeological Resources Program (NARP) began partnering with five National Park units to pilot a new initiative: the design and facilitation of a region-wide volunteer archeological site monitoring program. Working with park staff and stakeholders at the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt-Van Buren National Historic Sites, and later at Cape Cod National Seashore, local volunteers were recruited and trained to monitor archaeological site conditions, identifying and documenting potential threats and disturbances that impact these irreplaceable resources in the parks. Ultimately, these efforts support baseline inventory and Section 110 compliance, which requires federal agencies to maintain updated inventories of the archaeological resources for which they are responsible. Within the National Park Service, this is a task that requires coordination between regional archaeology programs and individual park units. In the Northeast region, there is also a present need for community-based stewardship of archaeological sites that are threatened by natural and human-caused factors. The lessons and feedback provided by this pilot launch of the Volunteer Archeological Monitoring Program (VAMP) include considerations in community volunteer engagement, resource stewardship, site data management and security, benefits to federal compliance, and how volunteer monitoring can support inclusive park programming.

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)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36039.0