Updating Washington, DC’s Archaeology Guidelines

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Cities on the Move: Reflecting on Urban Archaeology in the 21st Century", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Urban archaeology requires theory and methods tailored to densely-developed urban settings and the flexibility to apply to hyper-local conditions. Washington, DC’s archaeology guidelines are 25 years old and in dire need of updating to encompass current methods and technologies -such as GIS, and remote sensing- and for fundamental changes in curation, and collections and data management, including our new federally-compliant (36CFR79) curation facility. The pace of development has increased at the same time as CRM industry consolidation resulting in PIs lacking relevant local experience planning surveys. It’s clear to us that we need concise, well-written, targeted guidelines that reflect general best practices to streamline the compliance survey review process. We look to our urban archaeology peers, the CRM community, and the public, for their input and support for a robust and collaborative update process so we can better face the future of managing the past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Cities on the Move: Reflecting on Urban Archaeology in the 21st Century   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow