Cultural resources may be cherished for their beauty or utility or a host of other reasons. But it is the ability to connect one generation to another that gives them their most valued attribute: an inherent capacity to mold and reinforce our identities as social creatures.

Of course, the shaping and guiding of human lives involves much more than cultural resources; it embraces the entire cultural system into which each person is born and within which each must grow and work, love and die. Cultural resources are both a part of and representative of these systems. In concert with lesson plan and sacred ritual, recreational play and family vacation, cultural resources bring people together with the values and ideas that are necessary for success in contemporary society.

Cultural resources constitute a unique medium through which all people, regardless of background, can see themselves and the rest of the world from a new point of view. Access to cultural resources means that people can learn not only about their own immediate ancestors but about other traditions as well.

Cultural Resource Management

The physical attributes of cultural resources are, with few exceptions, nonrenewable. Once the historic fabric of a monument is gone, nothing can bring back its authenticity; once the objects in an archeological site are disturbed, nothing can recover the information that might have been gained through analysis of their spatial relationships.

The primary concern of cultural resource management, therefore, is to minimize the loss or degradation of culturally significant material.

Straightforward as these concerns are, translating them into a management program is anything but simple. Contributing to this complexity are a legally mandated review process, staff trained in diverse academic disciplines, limited funds, and a shortage of trained personnel.

In spite of these conditions, cultural resource management can be largely understood in terms of two basic questions that must be asked about all cultural resources. How is a cultural resource identified and what makes a resource significant? What should be done to properly care for a cultural resource?

Types of Cultural Resources

Archeological resources are the remains of past human activity and records documenting the scientific analysis of these remains. Archeological resources include stratified layers of household debris and the weathered pages of a field notebook, laboratory records of pollen analysis and museum cases of polychrome pottery. Archeological features are typically buried but may extend above ground; they are commonly associated with prehistoric peoples but may be products of more contemporary society. What matters most about an archeological resource is its potential to describe and explain human behavior. Archeological resources have shed light on family organization and dietary patterns, they have helped us understand the spread of ideas over time and the development of settlements from place to place.

Cultural landscapes are settings we have created in the natural world. They reveal fundamental ties between people and the land—ties based on our need to grow food, give form to our settlements, meet requirements for recreation, and find suitable places to bury our dead. Landscapes are intertwined patterns of things both natural and constructed: plants and fences, watercourses and buildings. They range from formal gardens to cattle ranches, from cemeteries and pilgrimage routes to village squares. They are special places: expressions of human manipulation and adaptation of the land.

Structures are material assemblies that extend the limits of human capability. Without them we are restricted to temperate climates, the distances we can walk, and the loads we can carry. With them we can live where we choose, cross the continent in hours, and hurl a spacecraft at the moon. Structures are buildings that keep us warm in winter’s worst blizzard and bridges that keep us safe over raging rivers; they are locomotives that carry us over vast prairies and monuments to extend our memories. They are temple mounds and fishing vessels, auto factories and bronze statues—elaborations of our productive ability and artistic sensitivity.

Museum objects are manifestations and records of behavior and ideas that span the breadth of human experience and depth of natural history. They are evidence of technical development and scientific observation, of personal expression and curiosity about the past, of common enterprise and daily habits. Museum objects range from a butterfly collection to the woven fragments of a prehistoric sandal. They include the walking cane of an American president, a blacksmith’s tools, and the field notes of a marine biologist. They encompass fossilized dinosaur bones and business journals, household furnishings and love letters bound with a faded ribbon. They are invaluable— samples and fragments of the world through time and the multitude of life therein.

Ethnographic resources are basic expressions of human culture and the basis forvcontinuity of cultural systems. A cultural system encompasses both the tangible and the intangible. It includes traditional arts and native languages, religious beliefs and subsistence activities. Some of these traditions are supported by ethnographic resources: special places in the natural world, structures with historic associations, and natural materials. An ethnographic resource might be a riverbank used as a Pueblo ceremonial site or a schoolhouse associated with Hispanic education, sea grass needed to make baskets in an African-American tradition or a 19th-century sample of carved ivory from Alaska. Management of ethnographic resources acknowledges that culturally diverse groups have their own ways of viewing the world and a right to maintain their traditions.

The Nature of Cultural Resources

Significance

An idea common to all cultural resources is the concept of significance. To be significant, a cultural resource must have important historical, cultural, scientific, or technological associations and it must manifest those associations in its physical substance. Put another way, the significance of cultural resources is based on two interrelated qualities. A cultural resource consists of a number of physical, chemical, or biological features; at the same time, it consists of ideas, events, and relationships. This duality is evident in cultural resources as small as a penny or as large as the Statue of Liberty. Fashioned from copper, both share common material properties. Shaped into symbols—one of economic value, the other of a fundamental human right—both also serve as expressions of ideas.

Associations

Regardless of type, every cultural resource must have a place in the history or prehistory of the United States, or it must have value for a particular ethnic group. This tie between a resource and its cultural context is its association. Associations commonly fall into one of four areas. Resources may be linked to historic events or noteworthy people; they may be embodiments of technical accomplishment, design, or workmanship; they may be sources of information important in historical or archeological research; or they may be important in the cultural system of an ethnic group. The context for these associations may be national in scale or focus on regional and local affairs.

Integrity

Although a cultural resource must have relevant associations, a cultural resource does not consist solely of those associations. In themselves, cultural resources are not a revolutionary engineering concept or a pattern of crop rotation, a landmark court case or the skills of a master craftsman. Cultural resources are physical entities with qualities such as mass, color, and texture, some of which express historical or cultural associations. Integrity addresses the degree to which behavior and ideas are manifested in the form and substance of a resource. A cultural resource has integrity if it retains material attributes associated with its social values.

Integrity has many attributes. It is the material aspect of a resource and the ways in which materials were put together; it is the relationship between different parts of a resource and the aesthetic qualities that resulted; it is the exact geographic location of a resource and the nature of its setting. Integrity may be hidden under coats of paint, aged by weather, or chipped away by rodents; but it is capable of being sensed—it can be recognized, described, and verified. Integrity is the past revealed in physical form.

Essentials of a Comprehensive Cultural Resource Management Program

The dual nature of cultural resources, an inseparable union of social and physical qualities, leads directly to the three central issues of their management: first, to discover the significance or meaning of each resource; second, to slow the rate at which their essential material qualities are lost; and third, to support the use and enjoyment of cultural resources while minimizing negative effects on them. These imperatives are at the heart of the cultural resource program. Their corresponding activities are emphasized differently for each resource type and labeled differently from discipline to discipline.

But we can discuss the sum of all these activities in terms of three broad functions: research, planning, and stewardship.

Research

Research begins by locating and evaluating cultural resources. It entails historical analysis and detailed physical examination. Research identifies Native American groups with traditional interests in park resources and locates places or things within park boundaries having special importance for them.

It works through layers of debris in a coastal village site, discovering how people once lived from the proximity of fish bones, shell beads, and other things left behind. Research has the potential to identify changes in the field layout of a farming valley, establish the load-bearing capability of a building, and verify the origin of a historical document.

A major issue in research is setting appropriate limits on the scope and level of investigation. In most cases, NPS policy requires that research be driven by management concerns. Defining management concerns and translating them into a research activity requires dialogue between managers and cultural resource specialists.

Research should also consider ideas and advice from people outside the Service—particularly our partners in cultural resource management, contemporary ethnic populations, historians, and scientists in related fields. This exchange should grow from a shared understanding about the nature of cultural resources, it should reflect awareness that treatment without adequate information may do more harm than good, and it should not presume that research is an end in itself.

Planning

Planning addresses the basic question, “How can we best take care of our resources while allowing the public to enjoy them?” Good answers to this question require creative thinking, insightful analysis, and well-tempered flexibility. Planning seeks to identify and assess the likely effects of an action on cultural resources before that action is taken.

Planning also recognizes the validity of different cultural perspectives and finds ways to integrate those viewpoints with park management objectives. Planning looks not just at desired results, but also at the potential for unintended harm. Putting a 19th-century quilt on display may help tell a story about American craft traditions, but it may also increase the possibility of the quilt being soiled, mutilated, or stolen. Planning weighs the tradeoffs between preservation and functional considerations in finding uses that best fit a specific resource.

Although inappropriate uses can have devastating effects on cultural resources, protective treatments may themselves give cause for concern. Use of herbicides to control vegetation in an archeological site may prevent damage from roots, but might also invalidate Carbon- 14 dating of material recovered from that site. Application of some latex paints may reduce maintenance costs for historic woodwork, but might also result in surface loss from water vapor trapped under the new coating. Similar problems have been encountered with abrasive cleaners, metal reinforcing rods, and mothballs. Slowly, constantly, at the scale of pinholes and hairline cracks, these threats can bring down the largest of structures and reduce the hardest stone to dust.

Stewardship

Research and planning culminate in stewardship. Stewardship consists of systematic, responsible actions directly affecting resources. Stewardship is a matter of matching ability with the task at hand. Watering a lawn, dusting furniture, and oiling door hinges are common acts of stewardship. So too are pruning a tree and replacing a worn stair tread—although this work requires a higher level of knowledge and ability. Even more skill is needed to repair fragile materials such as frescos in a Spanish Colonial church, to propagate historic plant material embodied in a rare fruit tree cultivar, or to recover data from a prehistoric hunting camp. Stewardship seeks to limit the loss of historic materials and to maintain historic character; it results in the perpetuation and appreciation of cultural values.

Most of the threats to cultural resources come from their surroundings. Theft, uncontrolled relative humidity, and careless handling endanger museum objects. Looting, soil erosion, and rodents eat away at archeological resources. Acid rain, fire, and remodeling pose serious threats to historic structures. Wildland fires, highway improvements, and plant diseases wreak havoc with cultural landscapes. Fencing, pollution, and insensitive use can desecrate an ethnographic resource.

Responses to these threats are many and varied. They range from police stakeouts to improved record-keeping, from installation of smoke alarms to structural monitoring gauges.

But the two most important and effective protective measures are these:

The first is a positive, caring attitude toward cultural resources. Coupled with knowledge, such an attitude prepares every employee to act as a resource steward—recognizing threats, taking appropriate emergency action, and calling for assistance.

The second measure is a spirit of cooperation that reaches out to form stewardship coalitions with local governments, professional organizations, state agencies, and nonprofit groups. Such partnerships are essential to confronting threats located outside park boundaries; they are also supportive of more comprehensive approaches to resource identification, planning, and heritage education.