FORWARD

PROTECTING THE PAST: CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT - A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE

Charles R. McGimsey III

To be technical it perhaps could be stated that Cultural Resource Management (CRM) was born with the politicizing which preceded and was essential to the ultimate passage of the Antiquities Act of 1906. (For a fascinating account of this process see Lee, 1970.) But as a coherent identified concept, applicable specifically to archaeology, it crystallized in the minds of a few archaeologists at the Airlie House conference in 1974 and was given formal birth, or at least was christened with the publication of that report (McGimsey and Davis 1977). At least the Airlie House conferees thought that this was the case for they specifically stated: "We soon realized we had an opportunity to legitimize and christen, through an official naming ceremony, what had actually been born over the past few years - the whole idea of Cultural Resource Management" (McGimsey and Davis 1977:25).

Obviously the concept of "managing" archaeological resources, rather than simply investigating them, did not spring full blown and without precedent in the minds of the Airlie participants. The principal value of the Airlie House conferences, as it was designed and intended that it should be, was the drawing together and crystallization of a wide range of previous thinking on a series of six specific topics relevant then, and now, to archaeology. One of the sets of discussions at Airlie House was specifically directed toward the management of archaeological resources (McGimsey and Davis 1977:25-63). I don't recall any discussions at the time as to whether we were really talking about "archaeological resource management." The Airlie discussions, by their very nature, were wide ranging and broadly based and I think all of the participants, perhaps because of their anthropological background, were really thinking about and concerned with all cultural resources, not just archaeological ones. I do remember a discussion at a 1984 Board meeting of the Society of Professional Archaeologists (SOPA) were it was suggested that the SOPA emphasis should really be titled Archaeological Resource Management rather than Cultural Resource Management and, indeed, they have so changed that title, but the idea never has achieved broad scale acceptance and perhaps it shouldn't. We all should be and no doubt like to think that we are interested in managing the full scope of cultural resources even if, as archaeologists, our primary area of concern is with the archaeological ones.

The Antiquitites Act of 1906 was followed, in an episodic fashion, by other efforts to legislate the management of the resource base (see Fowler, Friedman, Cheek, Neumann, and Rogers this volume for further discussion of historic preservation legislation). The establishment of the National Park Service (NPS) in 1916 and the Historic Sites Act of 1935 established a policy of public concern and resulted in management plans for some specific areas in federal ownership but nothing developed that could be said to be a national consciousness of the need to protect and manage cultural resources. The archaeological profession itself, until well after World War II, tended to be a mirror of these times - more concerned with exploration and investigation than management.

This is not a criticism. At the time the major concern, and correctly so, was to determine what was out there archaeologically speaking rather than with disappearance of the resource base. There was so much that hadn't yet been discovered or understood that it was impossible to develop any realistic parameters regarding uniqueness or scarcity. There certainly was a sense of what was being lost through looters and other destructive forces but an attempt to manage this archaeological resource base was simply not a realistic goal for the small number of professional archaeologists active in the U.S. prior to World War II.

The archaeological activity which took place during the Depression of the thirties and into the early forties resulted in the recovery of massive amounts of archaeological data (much still undigested) but could not, in any realistic sense of the term, be described as management. It was primarily a channeling of available human resources toward archaeological targets of opportunity. That is not to say, of course, that considerable thought did not go into specific programs and projects.

Shortly after the conclusion of World War II the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers established its ambitious program of damming and controlling part of the Missouri River Basin and, since then, most of the river systems in the United States. As the Corps program got underway Julian Steward challenged his Smithsonian archaeological colleagues to develop a program or course of action to deal with the archaeological consequences of this construction activity. The end result was the River Basin Salvage (RBS) program initiated by the Smithsonian but soon transferred to the National Park Service and its Interagency Archeological Services (IAS). Though still geographically constrained the areas inundated were so extensive and the funding, relatively speaking, so massive that some measure of Cultural Resource Management inevitably came into play.

A major force throughout this era and beyond, the Committee on the Recovery of Archeological Remains (CRAR, as it became known) was an informally organized group of (largely) professional archaeologists sponsored by various scientific societies, but latterly it became essentially self perpetuating. It served as an advisory body to the NPS Interagency Archeological Services but it rapidly became also the chief legislative champion of archaeology and the archaeological conscience before Congress. It more than once saved the archaeological appropriation of the RBS and IAS programs.

CRAR also served as a major communication link among the rather considerable number of federal agencies involved with archaeology in the twenty year period of say 1948-1968. It held annual meetings in Washington D.C. (the travel expenses of which were paid by the NPS/IAS). The first day of the usual two day meeting was an informal no-holds-barred discussion with NPS personnel many of whom were brought in from across the country. This give and take session discussed what the Federal Government felt the profession was doing right and wrong and, in turn, what the profession felt was right and wrong about the federal program. No outsiders (except those invited) were welcomed at these free wheeling, essentially confidential, sessions. The second day was much more formal and was usually held in one of the Department of Interior meeting rooms. CRAR sat as a panel and heard more or less formal reports (which it had requested) from all federal agencies active in archaeology as to what that agency was doing and what problems it had had or foresaw. Thus everyone concerned on the federal level was aware of what was happening archaeologically and there was ample opportunity for interchange among the agencies and between them and the CRAR as representative of the profession.

CRAR fulfilled a vital but little known or heralded function during a critical period of archaeological development in this country. It died in 1977 largely as a result of a Carter Administration decision against advisory committees, unfortunately just at a time when the profession and the government were most in need of it. As a latter day member I would like some day to more fully document this organization and the associated period of archaeological development. Certainly somebody should.

The real period of gestation leading to the conceptualization and birth of full blown programs of Cultural Resource Management was, in my opinion, the ten years from 1968 through 1977. No one person can be fully aware of the many rivulets that have become the present river of concepts identified under the rubric of Cultural Resource Management. What follows is primarily a history of my own awareness of the process.

We need to set the stage. When I came to Arkansas in the fall of 1957 as an Instructor in Anthropology and Assistant Curator of the University Museum, I was the only archeologist in the State. I knew little about Southeastern Archaeology and nothing about the archaeology of Arkansas. I had a commitment of $1,000 to run a Field School (a far better research budget than most states at the time, I was to find). So when Pinky Harrington of the NPS showed up on my doorstep a few months after my arrival to ask if I was interested in a contract to survey a reservoir (Greers Ferry) in north central Arkansas, I was delighted at the chance to learn by experience something of the local scene. Having been ensconced at the University for a few months I presented myself to the Dean (probably only the second or third time I had seen him) and asked for the Spring semester off to do research. At the time I thought nothing of this request or of its being granted, though in retrospect I am both appalled at my innocence (gall?) and astonished at the Dean's acquiescence.

My "research design" as proposed and accepted by the NPS (or perhaps it was vice versa) was simplicity itself. "I would find out as much as I could about what was present in the area with the funds the NPS said it had available." That decided, come February 1958, I went to Greers Ferry, inquired around for an amateur and asked him to show me an Indian mound. I had never seen one. The reader must bear in mind that except for a 20 page unpublished report on a brief season of survey at Table Rock Reservoir some distance to the north of me, there was no archaeological literature for the entire north central part of the State (and very little for the rest).

That same year, the Arkansas General Assembly requested that I recommend what the State should do with regard to preserving its archaeological resources. As a good burgeoning bureaucrat I conducted a poll of the other states. I found that for the vast majority of the states my rather poor situation (fiscally and in terms of relevant literature) was anything but unique. The point of all this is that at that time the profession was not yet ready to manage anything.

To manage a resource you need have, at a minimum a) some conception as to the nature and extent of the resource to be managed, b) a plan, and c) a fairly broad base of support for such a plan among the parties affecting the resource. In Arkansas and in almost all other states none of these elements were yet present.

It was 1968 before I or my colleagues in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley began to look away from our immediate research projects and make any assessment of what was going on in the real world and how it might affect our archaeological resource base. In the case of Arkansas and Missouri we were dragged out of our respective holes and asked to look about by John Corbett, then chief of the IAS (and a man who in my opinion has received too little recognition for his foresight and for his ability to hold together and develop the IAS during a critical period for the profession).

He asked with disarming and feigned innocence if either Carl Chapman or I had any idea what the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) program of land leveling was doing to the archaeological resources in our respective states. Neither of us did. John offered a little NPS money to help us find out.

We, like most archaeologists at the time, had been concerned chiefly with doing the best, most perceptive, scientific job we could on the targets of opportunity presented us (which for many were River Basin Projects funded by NPS). We had little drive and generally less incentive to worry about the "larger picture" or being concerned with developing a program for managing the resources in an entire region, area, or state. And even if we had, few of us had adequate data with which to accomplish it.

For my part I had devoted much of my time between 1957 and 1968 to facilitating the development of public support for, and legislative adaption of a statewide program in archaeology. An essential step toward management, no doubt, but I don't recall that I conceived of it in those terms at that time. I worked largely behind dams, because that was where the money was, and, frankly, devoted little more than hand wringing attention to the rest. In that, I do not feel that I was unique.

It was an entirely new idea to me when Corbett suggested to Chapman and myself that we should determine what effects land leveling and other agricultural practices were having on our State's archaeology. And the most cursory look was a revelation. We discovered, for instance, that in Arkansas the SCS planned to level all levelable land in the next 20 years (they haven't quite) with a subsequent loss of perhaps 4/5 of the sites in eastern Arkansas, the homeland of the Mississippi culture (Ford, Rolingson, and Medford 1972).

Things began happening thick and fast. In 1967 the Arkansas Legislature had finally established the statewide Arkansas Archeological Survey. In 1968 using the tag end of the Survey's first year appropriation Hester Davis, Jimmy Griffin, and I initiated a series of conferences which resulted in the short lived but significant MAVAP (Mississippi Alluvial Valley Archeological Program) organization.

We convened a series of three meetings: one each in Greenville, Mississippi, the bootheel of Missouri, and in East St. Louis Illinois, attended by some 50 archaeologists - most of those doing active research in the Valley at that time. From this came one of the first regional research designs in the United States (McGimsey, Davis, and Griffin 1968), the booklet * Stewards of the Past (60,000 copies of which were subsequently distributed by state organizations nationwide), the impetus of what became, five years later, the Moss-Bennett legislation, and a stark realization on the part of all of us that we were indeed facing a situation of crisis proportions (Davis 1972a). We decided we had jolly well better start developing some plans.

It was at this same time too that I had completed a second national survey of state and federally supported archaeological programs (again at the request of the Arkansas General Assembly) the result of which was largely completed by late 1970 (McGimsey 1972).

In short, in the span of a few short years I had gone from a scientific life concerned with my own particular research projects of the moment to being almost forced to concentrate on archaeological resources in the broadest possible context. My situation was by no means unique. It was the beginning of a time of transition and turmoil which would soon touch all but the most provincial archaeologists (geographically or intellectually).

In some ways my situation during the early and mid seventies was unique.* The solid and well funded program provided me by the State of Arkansas meant that during the five years (1969-1974) of Moss-Bennett's development, rewriting, and ultimate passage I was more available than most to go to Washington.

It happened also that during this period I was on the Executive Committee of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) (from 1971-72), and was president-elect and president from 1973-1975. I was also asked to join the CRAR in 1971 and served until its demise. I was getting heavily involved nationally.

For one reason or another I traveled nationwide during much of the mid seventies talking, listening, and, whenever possible, endeavoring to arouse both the profession and the general public to the situation faced by all concerning the rapid disappearance of our cultural resource base. In 1971 I was employed by the NPS to spend six weeks touring the country talking to all but one or two NPS archaeologists nationwide as well as Regional Directors and Park Superintendents for whom they worked. On the basis of this I made an extensive report on the condition of the national archaeological program and recommended changes in organization and direction - some of which were actually implemented. I used my year as President Elect of SAA to attend and talk to almost all regional archaeological meetings that year (1973/74). I used the opportunity of being the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) Norton Lecturer (1975) to discuss the rapidly developing situation with those, normally classical, scholars nationwide.

What I am trying to convey here is not the extent of my own activity but the tenor of the time. It was a time of intense and extensive communication within the profession and between it and many of its publics--to a degree unprecedented at any time before. There were meetings, conferences, and discussions all over the country covering topics (management, ethics, etc.) which had rarely been covered before with such intensity.

It was a time when the 35 or so archaeologists with the NPS were almost the only archaeologists employed by the Federal Government; when archaeologists employed by private businesses or self-employed archaeologists were concepts not even dreamed about. It was a time when new approaches and responsibilities of the discipline of archaeology were brought into focus. It was a time when CRM, the conservation ethic, and regional planning all came to the fore and became a major force changing both the profession and the discipline forever.

Obviously others than I had been active (physically and mentally) during this period as well (remember, this is a personal perspective not an all encompassing history). The two external instances which most impressed themselves on my own consciousness and thinking were Lipe's seminal paper on conservation archaeology (Lipe 1974 - but first formulated in 1971 and first presented in 1971), and the 1974 Denver CRM Conference (Lipe and Lindsay 1974).

The Denver Conference was an extraordinary one, with a high sense of need and a challenge to address vital problems intensely felt by all of the participants. There was a sense of commonality of problem and dedication to developing approaches to solutions exceeded, in my experience, only by the six Airlie House seminars. This excitement bubbled over into after hours discussions; one result, which took place in an adjacent bar, being the foundation of the American Society for Conservation Archeology.

This whole period was one of extraordinary activity and intellectual interchange among professionals (and increasingly by the mid seventies, by an ever expanding number of federal agencies) both regionally and nationally.

One of the major results of this sometimes near frantic activity and reassessment during the mid seventies was a crystallization of the need for broad scale regional approaches, for coordinated attacks (e.g. Southwest Archaeological Research Group, SARG), and, above all, plans for managing and preserving the resource base as a total entity not simply piece meal as targets of opportunity arose. The stage was set for the birth of CRM.

The development of archaeological knowledge in the seventies and eighties has been considerable. Our knowledge of the archaeological data base has increased manyfold over that of the fifties and early sixties. Much of this increase has come about primarily through the operation of CRM practices. This data is still often piece meal and undigested but it is a part of the record and will be increasingly available in the near future as researchers learn to utilize the capability of computerized data bases.

I believe one of the important but often overlooked aspects of the Moss-Bennett process was that during the 5 years it was in the making there was an unusual amount of interchange not just among members of the profession but among the federal agencies themselves as witnessed by the large numbers of meetings and conferences mentioned above. By the time Moss-Bennett became law virtually every involved Federal agency was fully aware of the legislation and was already gearing up to handle its responsibilities thereunder.

The profession too was geared up. Unlike the situation which prevailed in the fifties or even the early sixties nearly everyone in the profession was now very aware of, if not actively involved with, the crisis with regard to the archaeological resource base, and of the need for long range planning and active coherent consistent management policies and programs. The general public as well had increasingly been made aware by such articles as that by Davis in Science (Davis 1972), lectures such as my Norton series, the increased awareness of archaeology by the National Trust, and continued, indeed increased, active input by the profession into the legislative process nationally and to only a slightly lesser extent locally.

By the end of the seventies there was a wide spread support base within and outside the archaeological profession (though not all archaeologists thought, or think, CRM is a good idea, but that is another story.) In addition, partly through local initiative, but owing much of its drive to NPS initiative via grants for state plans (to Massachusetts and Arkansas initially) and its Resource Preservation Planning Process (RP3) there are a growing number of local, state and regional data bases and, to a lesser extent, actual plans for the management of archaeological resources. In the Mississippi Valley the early 1968 MAVAP effort was supplemented in the early seventies by a series of regional summaries done under Hester Davis' direction (Davis 1970, 1972b, 1975). In this same area the latest and most comprehensive regional summary and management plan is that recently completed by the Arkansas Archeological Survey (as lead agency) for the Southwestern Division of the Corps of Engineers. This 14 volume summary (if that is not an oxymoron) encompasses the area from the Mississippi River to the Arizona/New Mexico Border and from Southern Kansas to the Gulf - roughly 1/4 of the contiguous United States. During this period, too, the federal planning process has been considerably strengthened by additional legislation and procedures.

In short, to a very large extent we do now have all the basic elements necessary to begin management and protection of the resource base. Our knowledge of the data base now is such that in most areas we do have a reasonable handle on what is probably out there - if not yet (if ever) a full grasp of the details. We do have a broad base of support or at least awareness among the profession, federal agencies, and at least some elements of the public. And, increasingly, we do have state plans available and in place or under development. Continued development and implementation is the challenge of the nineties.

The Airlie House meetings on the management of archaeological resources held in July-September l974 and the subsequent two years during which the report was widely circulated and updated as a result of a rapidly changing federal situation served, in many ways, to summarize and crystallize this period of activity. It provided a focus and a base for the future development of CRM such that, in retrospect, I believe the judgment of the authors was correct that that report would more or less officially christen, through an official naming ceremony what had been born over the past few years - the whole concept of Cultural Resource Management.

The present volume endeavors to explore the many paths taken by this healthy and ever growing child of the seventies and to suggest paths for management and protection to follow in the nineties and beyond. Protecting the Past has come of age.

References Cited

Davis, H. A., Ed. (1970) Archeological and Historical Resources of the Red River Basin. Arkansas Archeological Survey Research Series No. 1.

Davis, H. A. (1972a) The Crises in American Archeology. Science 175 (4019):267-282.

Davis, H. A. (1972b) An Inventory and Assessment of the Archeological and Historical Resource of the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley to January 1971. Report submitted to Southeast Region, National Park Service.

Ford, J. L., M. A. Rolingson and L. D. Medford (1972) Site Destruction due to Agricultural Practices. Arkansas Archeological Survey Research Series No. 3.

Lee, R. F. (1970) The Antiquities Act of 1970. Office of History and Historic Architecture, Eastern Center, Washington D.C.

Lipe, W. D. (1974) A Conservation Model for American Archaeology. Kiva, 39(3,4).

Lipe, W. D. and Lindsay, A.J., Jr. (1974) Proceedings at the 1974 Cultural Resource Management Conference. Museum of Northern Arizona Technical Series No. 14.

McGimsey III, C. R. (1972) Public Archeology. Seminar Press, New York.

McGimsey III, C. R. and Davis, H.A. (1977) The Management of Archeological Resources. The Airlie House Report. Special Publication of the Society for American Archaeology.

McGimsey III, C. R., Davis, H.A., and Griffin, J.B. (1968) A Preliminary Evaluation of the Status of Archeology in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley. Arkansas Archeological Survey, limited distribution.

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