Cultural Heritage Management - The Effect of CHM On Archaeology

The Effect of CHM On Archaeology

CHM has been a mixed blessing for archaeology. Preservation legislation has ensured that no valuable site will be destroyed by construction without study, but the work of rescue archaeologists is sometimes controversial. Some academic archaeologists do not take archaeological rescue or salvage work seriously because of its emphasis on site identification and preservation rather than intensive study and analysis. Where archaeology is motivated by proposed development, the archaeological contracts are placed through a bidding process. The choice of archaeological contractor typically lies with the developer and there is little incentive to prevent the company responsible for construction selecting the bid with the lowest price estimate, or shortest investigation time, regardless of the archaeological merits of the submitted bids.

The impact of archaeological rescue and salvage work has been considerable; given the large amount of construction, and that the bulk of archaeological work in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom is developer led. Unfortunately, the large number of reports written on the thousands of sites dug each year are not necessarily published in public forums. So-called grey literature is sometimes difficult for even archaeologists outside the developer or the CRM organisation that performed the work to access. Some initiatives, notably the OASIS project of the Archaeological Data Service in the UK, are beginning to make the reports available to everyone.