Cultural resources management

In the broadest sense, cultural resource management (CRM) is the vocation and practice of managing cultural resources, such as the arts and heritage. It incorporates Cultural Heritage Management which is concerned with traditional and historic culture. It also delves into the material culture of archaeology. Cultural resource management encompasses current culture, including progressive and innovative culture, such as urban culture, rather than simply preserving and presenting traditional forms of culture. In the broadest sense, cultural resource management (CRM) is the vocation and practice of managing cultural resources, such as the arts and heritage. It incorporates Cultural Heritage Management which is concerned with traditional and historic culture. It also delves into the material culture of archaeology. Cultural resource management encompasses current culture, including progressive and innovative culture, such as urban culture, rather than simply preserving and presenting traditional forms of culture. However, the broad usage of the term is relatively recent and as a result it is most often used as synonymous with heritage management. In the United States, cultural resources management is not usually divorced from the heritage context. The term is, 'used mostly by archaeologists and much more occasionally by architectural historians and historical architects, to refer to managing historic places of archaeological, architectural, and historical interests and considering such places in compliance with environmental and historic preservation laws.' Cultural resources include both physical assets such as archaeology, architecture, paintings and sculptures and also intangible culture such as folklore and interpretative arts, such as storytelling and drama. Cultural resource managers are typically in charge of museums, galleries, theatres etc., especially those that emphasize culture specific to the local region or ethnic group. Cultural tourism is a significant sector of the tourism industry. At a national and international level, cultural resource management may be concerned with larger themes, such as languages in danger of extinction, public education, the ethos or operation of multiculturalism, and promoting access to cultural resources. The Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity is an attempt by the United Nations to identify exemplars of intangible culture. Cultural resource management can trace its beginning to the environment/conservation movement in the 1960s and 1970s. During this time, there was growth in legislation concerning the protection of cultural resources. The Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act of 1974, commonly known as the Moss-Bennett Act, helped to fuel the creation of CRM, while creating “growth in archaeological jobs in the federal government, academia, and private sector.” Federal legislation had passed earlier in 1906 under the Antiquities Act, but it was not until the 1970s when the term “cultural resources” was coined by the National Park Service. This term came into more popular usage after two meetings in 1974: the Cultural Resource Management conference and the Airlie House conference. Following these conferences, the National Park Service (NPS) defined cultural resources in the Cultural Resource Management Guidelines as being: “Those tangible and intangible aspects of cultural systems, both living and dead, that are valued by or representative of a given culture or that contain information about a culture… include but are not limited to sites, structures, districts, objects, and historic documents associated with or representative of peoples, cultures, and human activities and events, either in the present or in the past. Cultural resources also can include primary written and verbal data for interpretation and understanding of those tangible resources.” Cultural resource management in the heritage context is mainly concerned with the investigation of sites with archaeological potential, the preservation and interpretation of historic sites and artifacts, and the culture of indigenous people. The subject developed from initiatives in rescue archaeology, sensitivities to the treatment of indigenous people, and subsequent legislation to protect cultural heritage. In the 1970s, archaeologists created the term 'cultural resource management' as a parallel to natural resource management to address the following resources: A significant proportion of the archaeological investigation in countries that have heritage management legislation including the United States and United Kingdom is conducted on sites under threat of development. In the US, such investigations are now done by private companies on a consulting basis, and a national organization exists to support the practice of CRM. Museums, besides being popular tourist attractions, often play roles in conservation of, and research on, threatened sites, including as repositories for collections from sites slated for destruction.