WHAT IS CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT? by Karen Garrard, PhD, RPA
Cultural Resource Management, or CRM, is a process by which the protection and management of our cultural heritage is given consideration in a modern world with an expanding population and changing needs. As the term states, CRM deals with cultural resources. In publications, environmental documents, and agency guidelines, the term cultural resource is commonly used as a synonym for an archaeological site or a historic property as defined by the National Register of Historic Places. A cultural resource can also include any of the following:
- Historic properties that have cultural value beyond their historicity
- Native American graves and cultural items
- Shipwrecks
- Museum collections
- Historical documents
- Religious sites
- Religious practices
- Cultural use of natural resources
- Folklife, tradition, and other social institutions
- Theater groups, orchestras, and other community cultural amenities
Cultural resources do not exist in a vacuum. Instead they are situated in an environment where people live, work, and build new buildings and infrastructure, such as new roads, utilities, sanitary landfills, and parks, and need safe and protected environments. Cultural resources are important to people, and it is reasonable to expect that these resources will be important to people in the future too.
On frequent occasions, the expansion or modification of cities and towns and rural areas impact or threaten to impact cultural resources. In these circumstances, decisions must be made to strike a balance between the various interests—what is needed is practical growth with an eye toward the protection of the cultural resources.
The stakeholders on these occasions include all kinds of people who take part in a political process balancing the trade-offs between growth and preservation: federal agencies, such as the Federal Highway Administration or US Army Corps of Engineers; state agencies such as Departments of Transportation and State Historic Preservation Officers; politicians; engineers; Indigenous peoples; archaeological and historical consultants; oral historians; local and regional historical society members; civic leaders; property owners —in fact, the list of interested parties varies with the project and the cultural resources involved.
Cultural Resource Management can trace its beginning to the environmental/conservational 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 as well as more 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. In the United States, the term CRM is used mostly by archaeologists, architectural historians and historic architects to mean managing historic places of archaeological, architectural, and historical interest, and considering impacts to such places under a framework of environmental and historic preservation laws.
Much of what practitioners call CRM in the United States really deals with only those resources that are (a) physical places and things such as archaeological sites and buildings, and that are (b) in, or determined to be eligible for inclusion in, the National Register of Historic Places.
When a project or activity that a federal agency is involved in may affect such a property, a specific set of legal requirements, set forth in regulations under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of 1966, comes into play. The Section 106 regulations lay out a system of steps by which historic places are identified, effects on them are predicted, and ways are worked out to resolve effects that are adverse. All this is done through consultation among the federal agency, the State Historic Preservation Officer, and other interested parties, as listed above as stakeholders.
As part of Section 106, one will see whether a property is eligible for listing on the National Register There are four criteria for determining eligibility, assessed by determining whether the property is:
- Associated with broad patterns of the past; for example, a farmhouse that was part of the Underground Railroad for escaped slaves
- Associated with historically important persons; for example, Monticello being associated with Thomas Jefferson
- An example of historically important design or artistic merit; for example, a truss highway bridge or the Roebling Suspension Bridge in Cincinnati, Ohio
- Has the potential to yield important information on prehistory or history, for example, an archaeological site that can yield information about early Native American life ways
If any of these four criteria are applicable, the property is next considered for “integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association.” In laymen’s terms, it needs to be determined whether the cultural resource is in good enough condition to convey the significance of why it should be listed on the National Register. The four National Register criteria assume great importance in the United States because any location deemed to meet one or more of these criteria is usually treated more carefully than a location that is not deemed to meet any of these locations.
One thing that Section 106 does not do is protect cultural resources that are not historic properties—for example, relatively recent places of cultural importance, and non-physical cultural features like music, dance, and religious practice. Nor does it affect projects in which the federal government is not involved—private, state, and local projects requiring no federal funds or permits.
Under Section 106, recognizing the significance of a place merely means that it has to be considered in planning. The fact that a property is eligible for the National Register does not mean that it cannot impacted by a project. It means that ways of managing it and mitigating adverse effects on it have to be considered. If you believe that everything that is historically significant must be preserved, then you are either going to be unable to meet the changing needs of society, or you’re going to have to be very selective in what you call “historic”.
CRM at Metric Environmental
Cultural Resource Management features people from a wide array of disciplines. The general education of most involved in CRM includes, but is not limited to, sociology, archaeology, architectural history, cultural anthropology, historic preservation, and other fields in the social sciences. Career choices include working with: local, state, and federal action agencies that work directly with our natural and human environments or even more specifically, Native American resources; review agencies like the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, or the State Historic Preservation Offices; local government such as planning agencies, housing agencies, and social service agencies; local museums, libraries, or educational institutions; historic preservation advocacy organizations, such as the National Trust of Historic Preservation; and private environmental and cultural resources consulting firm.
Metric Environmental currently has a team of 19 highly qualified and well-respected cultural resources management professionals. Our archaeologists, historians, and architectural historians specialize in identifying, surveying, researching, and evaluating all types of cultural resources. Throughout the Midwest, our projects have ranged in scope from assisting communities and non-profit organizations with documenting archaeological remains and historic buildings to conducting Section 106 compliance investigations for large-scale undertakings that involve multiple state and federal agencies. Our team brings extensive knowledge and experience to the assessment and management of cultural resources to help our clients navigate their projects through what is often a critical part of regulatory compliance.
1906 Antiquities act https://docsteach.org/document/antiquities-act/
This primary source comes from the Records of the U.S. Senate. National Archives Identifier: 28264995
Full Citation: S. 4698, A Bill for the Preservation of American Antiquities; 2/26/1906; Bills and Resolutions Originating in the Senate during the 59th Congress; (SEN59A-B7); Bills and Resolutions Originating in the Senate, 1789 – 2002; Records of the U.S. Senate, Record Group 46; National Archives Building, Washington, DC. [Online Version, https://docsteach.org/document/antiquities-act/, March 9, 2026]
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