Full Spectrum Archaeology

Abstract

2Full Spectrum Archaeology (FSA) is an aspiration stemming from the convergence of archaeology's fundamental principles with international heritage policies and community preferences. FSA encompasses study and stewardship of the full range of heritage resources in accord with the full range of associated values and through the application of treatments selected from the full range of appropriate options. Late modern states, including British Columbia, Canada, nominally embrace de jure heritage policies consonant with international standards yet also resist de facto heritage management practice grounded in professional ethics and local values and preferences. In response, inheritor communities and their allies in archaeology are demonstrating the benefits of FSA and reclaiming control over cultural heritage. Archaeology and heritage management driven by altruistic articulation of communal, educational, scientific and other values further expose shortcomings and vulnerabilities of late modern states as well as public goods in and from FSA.Archaeological resource management; Cultural heritage management; History of archaeology; International heritage policies 3 Archaeologists in the later-2010s face some big questions. Is cultural heritage best treated as a part of archaeology, or vice versa? Can (and should) archaeology hold together as a unified discipline in the face of ongoing growth and diversification, especially in heritage resource management (HRM) archaeology and other fee-for-service practice? Should we proceed in riveting our disciplinary focus upon places and objects having scientific and historical values? Or, are the interests of archaeology and our diverse clientele better served by and through what we refer to, following Welch and Ferris (2014:97), as full spectrum archaeology (FSA)-an aspiration to employ an archaeological lens and other means to understand all cultural heritage, to attend to all values associated with heritage, and to consider management and treatment options that reflect and embrace those diverse values? Will we, archaeologists, continue the comfortably institutionalized ostensibly objective study and management of sites and artifacts within internal disciplinary logics and agendas, or shall we respond to international policies and increasingly vocal inheritor community preferences by expanding and diversifying archaeology into an essential if not always sufficient means for helping to identify, assess, and treat broad arrays of particularly significant cultural heritage? These seemingly academic questions go to the heart of practical and political relations between archaeology and late modern states, especially as regards to engagements archaeology and archaeologists are pursuing with international, national, regional, and communal partners to make decisions about what heritage will be carried forward and may help shape the future.In dialogue with the other essays in this collection, we seek to set a course for archaeology that stems the rising tides of late modern state control...

Cultural Resource Damage Assessment

“…This article's core recommendation-to apply ARPA's CRDA framework to investigations of violations of NHPA agreement documents and other alterations that merit administrative, personnel, or community response-accords with recent shifts in CRM policy and practice toward respectful considerations of Indigenous Peoples' sovereignties and interests in wider ranges of cultural resources and associated values (Atalay et al 2014;Hogg et al 2017;McManamon et al 2016;Poulios 2010). The legal prerogatives and social licenses possessed by CRM professionals are contingent on weighty responsibilities to benefit society by conserving and mobilizing cultural resources, principally through research, public outreach, and cooperation in community and economic development initiatives (Welch 2020b).…”

Assembling “Effective Archaeologies” toward Equitable Futures

“…Government‐sector practice is subject to bottom‐line assessments, with heritage and its regulation viewed as impediments to prosperity and growth (Coombe ). Cultural resource management practitioners navigate a marketplace configured by development and its imperatives (Cumberpatch and Roberts ; Hogg, Welch, and Ferris ; Hutchings and Dent ; Ndoro, Chirikure, and Deacon ), and public archaeology is pressured to demonstrate “value for money” (Flatman , 293–94) while muting critical engagement with contemporary socio‐political‐economic arrangements (Matsuda ; Segobye ). Regardless of location, we are called to account within terms and metrics shaped by these sensibilities in an enlarging “audit culture” (Strathern ).…”

Aboriginal rights and title for archaeologists: A history of archaeological evidence in Canadian litigation

“…Archaeologists possess both the technical proficiencies and the social and political licenses to access and interpret the material past. These privileged qualifications situate professional archaeologists as gatekeepers to the factual content embedded in much of the material record of pre-contact occupation in North America (Hogg et al., 2017: 182). In recognition that much of North American archaeology is a political, land-based practice that is alternately called upon and self-nominated to oversee and arbitrate Indigenous cultural affinities with objects, places, and time periods, archaeologists are obligated to understand fundamental aspects of Indigenous land rights and, we argue, the roles archaeological data play as evidence in highly consequential adjudications of rights and title claims.…”