What is a “cultural resource”? Looking beyond the title of Historian

Everyone knows what a natural resource is… but when folks talk about “cultural resources,” what do they mean?

When I introduce myself and my professional work in Cultural Resource Management, sometimes folks are unfamiliar with what exactly falls under that umbrella. This topic does link directly to the study of the Civil War, I promise! There are many brilliant people doing extremely important work to preserve and share 19^th-century history that might not consider themselves primarily “Historians.”

The field of Cultural Resource Management is broad, with many subfields. There’s a great deal of opportunities for careers, volunteering, and making a difference. Here’s a few things that fall under that scope:

Archeology – In many ways, archeology involves sifting through the “trash” of the past. Discarded items can tell us about farm operations, the way battles moved through the landscape or how soldiers in a winter encampment lived.

Ethnography – Ethnographic resources are both tangible or intangible; this includes arts, languages, and religion. It could relate to sites significant to certain communities, or the local materials used in their traditional activities.

Curation – Museum objects include the enormous range of historic objects that have survived to the modern day. They could also be items recovered through archeology or be removed portions of a historic structure. Curators help make sure these artifacts survive into the future through careful preservation methods and may also research specific aspects of material culture.

Historic Architecture – This includes farmhouses, barns, and bridges. It also includes other structures like monuments! Something might be significant due to being the work of a famous master architect, or it might be significant as a representative example of a common historic style. Through this, we learn how structures were built in the past and see what those people of the past valued.

Historic Landscape Architecture – Just as a historic building is made by people, a historic landscape is shaped by them. A cemetery could be a cultural landscape. A battlefield, a historic farm, or a managed garden are all historic landscapes as well, since they all show how people interacted with and altered a natural landscape.

These are all cultural resources! This can get complicated, since a place can cross these lines and be significant in many of these fields. Picture a hypothetical 1830s frame house on a Civil War battlefield. This is a historic building, and the farm and battlefield are a cultural landscape. Under the soil, remnants of historic life are archeological resources. But wait, there’s also evidence of a pre-contact Native American gathering site that remains culturally important to Tribal Nations, so it’s an ethnographic resource too.

Of course, discussion of cultural resources would be incomplete without spending some time on the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. Section 110 of the Act requires federal agencies to create historic preservation programs and study cultural resources they manage. That means that even NASA and the Department of Transportation employ preservation professionals, not just the National Park Service and Forest Service. Section 106 is the payoff for this research, as it requires the agencies to consider the impact of their projects on historic resources. This covers direct actions by federal agencies as well as actions they support through programs such as grants.[1] Importantly, while the law mandates consideration of negative impacts to these resources, it does not wholly prevent those impacts. Instead, it sets forward a system of studying resources, exploring alternatives, and consulting with other organizations and the public to find a way to mitigate impacts.

The NHPA also authorized State History Preservation Offices (SHPOs). SHPOs support efforts to identify, evaluate the significance of, and protect cultural resources in each state and territory. Tribal Historic Preservation Offices serve a similar role and represent American Indian Tribes for projects on tribal lands or affecting resources significant to them.

I’d hazard a guess that a majority of people that work professionally in history/cultural resources outside of classrooms and academia are working with projects that are in some way related to Section 106 and 110 of the NHPA. A significant number of federal employees work in cultural resources, and some of the largest history contracting firms specialize in creating reports specifically for use under these umbrellas.

“Working in history” can cover a vast range of things. Not all history occurs in a classroom or a university. Sometimes it happens in the dirt, trowel by trowel. Sometimes it happens in the museum storage office or leaning halfway inside of a building’s wall. Often, it happens in offices where hardworking people diligently record unwritten stories of our past and try to minimize the impact of projects on our shared cultural heritage.

[1] For more on Sections 106 and 110 of the NHPA, see this page by the National Park Service’s Denver Service Center: https://www.nps.gov/dscw/cr-nhpa.htm.