Two Icelandic Traditional Cultural Properties

With my sons Josh and Tom, and my grandson Duncan, I recently travelled to Iceland and Scotland.  I went in part to seek ideas for the forthcoming second edition of Places That Count, my 2003 book on traditional cultural properties.

In Reykjavik, Iceland, I was honored to be shown around by Magnus Skarphedinsson, a leading expert on Icelandic elves and huldufólk (hidden people).   Traditional belief in Iceland, presumably dating back to the country’s settlement by Scandinavian seafarers in the late 9^th century ACE, populates the rugged landscape with elves – small people of various sizes, and with huldufólk of approximately human scale, all of them capable of winking in and out of human perception.  They make their homes in various more or less distinctive landforms, notably cliffs, caves, and rock outcrops.  Under certain unspecified conditions, some people can see doors and windows in such landscape features, and in some cases whole houses and farms materialize and dematerialize. 

According to Mr. Skarphedinsson, 54% of Icelanders believe in elves and huldufólk, while an additional 33% take their possible existence into account.  Belief in such “nature spirits” was probably widespread in Europe, he thinks, prior to the Enlightenment, which had little impact on Iceland until the late 19^th century.  Icelandic elves and huldufólk are obviously very similar to the spirit beings that many Native Americans and other indigenous groups believe occupy the landscape.

Although there do not seem to be official legal requirements for identifying and protecting places associated with elves and huldufólk, such places are apparently routinely considered in planning and protected from harm.  Failure by project planners and developers to extend such consideration to elf/ huldufólk sites has reportedly complicated construction work through equipment breakdowns, supply problems, illnesses, injuries, and cost overruns.  As a result, planners routinely consult with local residents to identify elf and huldufólk sites and design their projects to avoid and protect them. 

Mr. Skarphedinsson took a film crew from Eurovision and me to two elf sites in Reykjavik, illustrated below.  According to my notes on what Mr. Skarphedinsson told us, their stories are as follows. 

The Chicken Farm Strike Site

In 1936, a chicken farmer obtained land from the government containing a modest sized rock outcrop.  In 1939 he developed plans to clear the rocks away for construction of a new chicken house.  He was visited in a dream by an elf woman, who explained that the outcrop was her family’s home and asked him to save it.  He agreed, and did so.

All was well until 1942, when he sold the farm to a bakery company.  The seller asked the buyers to save the outcrop, and they agreed, but by 1945 they were planning an expansion that would take out the rocks.  Despite warnings from the neighbors, they sought approval from the local planning authorities.  At the time, the farm had some 300 chickens, producing about 250 eggs per day. 

The company received local planning approval for its expansion, whereupon egg production went into a steep and wholly mysterious decline.  Within a few days production dropped to 190 eggs, then 150, then 80, then 30, and finally to zero.  The company brought in veterinarians to figure out what was wrong with the chickens, but the chickens seemed fine, and were eating happily; they just weren’t laying.

Seeing the handwriting on the rocks, as it were, the company changed its plans so as to save the outcrop.  The chickens began to lay, and within a few weeks production was back to normal.  In 1964 the local government declared the outcrop an “honored guest,” not to be disturbed.  Today it stands protected in the midst of a car park in what is now a light industrial zone.

Chicken Farm Strike Rock

Elf House Road

In the 1950s, residential development was planned along a ridge in suburban Reykjavik.  The main road along which houses would be built was planned down the spine of the ridge, through a low outcrop of volcanic rocks.  Local residents warned that the rocks were occupied by elves, and after some discussion the planners elected to realign the road to skirt the outcrop, and named it Elf House Road.  Plans for a house immediately adjacent to the rocks were also abandoned.  Life went on with occasional elf sightings but no problems until the summer of 1973.

Reykjavik has developed an advanced geothermal heating system, with insulated hot water pipes snaking throughout the city.  In the summer of 1973 the system was expanded into the Elf House Road development.  The system was designed to avoid the rock outcrop, but a main pipe trench was laid out in the adjacent open field.  The trench was dug, and a large cement truck arrived to pour the walls and floor of a facility to contain some of the distribution equipment.  The driver, a young man, drove over the edge of the rock outcrop.  The several workers involved in digging the trench were appalled, pulled the driver out of the truck, and began informing him vigorously about the dangers of encroaching on the elf house.  During which discussion the cement truck abruptly fell over on its side.  It required a considerable effort with a good deal of equipment to right it and set it on its way.

All is apparently quiet on Elf House Road today, and when we visited we spoke – well, Mr. Skarphedinsson  and the filmmakers spoke; having no Icelandic I just listened and watched – with a very self-possessed local resident of about 12 who said she had quite recently seen an elf among the rocks.  About 40 cm. tall, bearded, dressed in white with black shoes, he smiled at her and disappeared.

Elf House Road

Nikumaroro as a Cultural Heritage Problem -- and a Place to Visit

As some readers of these posts know, when I’m not slandering archaeologists, U.S. government agencies, and other participants in the Cultural/Heritage Management game, I play at archaeology on Nikumaroro, an uninhabited atoll in the South Pacific nation of Kiribati.  The organization with which I work, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR; see TIGHAR.org) hypotheses that aviation pioneers Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan landed and died there after their mysterious disappearance in July 1937.  Over the last 25 years we’ve developed a good deal of data in support of this hypothesis.

I just posted a note on my Amelia Earhart Archaeology blog -- http://ameliaearhartarchaeology.blogspot.com/ -- about the planned June 17-July 3 2015 trip to the island, sponsored by Betchart Expeditions and co-sponsored by TIGHAR, AAAS Travels, Sigma Xi Expeditions, and the Planetary Society.  Since about half the cabins are booked, I urged those interested in coming along to visit the trip’s web page at http://www.betchartexpeditions.com/aus-nz_amelia_earhart.htm, posthaste.

It occurs to me that beyond the Earhart connection, Nikumaroro is actually not without interest as a cultural heritage problem, so I thought I’d alert readers of this blog to the 2015 trip, too.  Here are the issues:

1.       Cultural significance:  Nikumaroro is uninhabited, though some of its former residents, now living mostly in the Solomon Islands, express the desire to re-occupy it.  It has interesting archaeological remains – not only the likely (we think) sites of Amelia Earhart’s landing, survival, and eventual demise, but the well-preserved remains of its 1939-1963 colonial village, by some interpretations the last new colony of the British Empire before World War II.  Prehistoric sites are certainly present, too, but have been hard to locate.  In terms of traditional culture, the island is associated with the legendary Nei Manganibuka, a legendary founding mother of I Kiribati society.

2.       Management challenges:  The big challenge is that Nikumaroro, like other atolls around the world, is being overwhelmed by the rising sea.  In the quarter-century we’ve worked there we’ve documented the steady encroachment of storm surges, particularly along the island’s western side.  The site of the colonial village, which is probably also the site of prehistoric occupation, is experiencing particularly severe impacts. 

3.       What can be done?  Sea level rise obviously isn’t likely to be stopped by any human agency, and given that no one lives on the island, trying to save it isn’t likely to get much priority in planning and funding.  So can we do nothing but watch it wash away? 

4.       Other management challenges include uncontrolled visitation by passing fishermen and by tourists.  Although the island is very remote, it may draw increasing attention if and when we find definitive evidence that Earhart really did wind up there.  How is this to be managed?  It’s something we talk about a good deal, but no one has come up with a plan, and again, funding is likely to be a problem.

5.       The island is part of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, the world’s largest theoretically protected marine area and a World Heritage List site (http://www.phoenixislands.org/ and http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1325).  It is so large that its management is next to impossible, particularly by a nation confronted with the economic, social, and environmental challenges that Kiribati suffers.   What can be done?  It’s another intractable problem.

So, the future of Nikumaroro does constitute a cultural heritage issue worth considering, and if anyone is interested in considering it on-site, do take a look at http://www.betchartexpeditions.com/aus-nz_amelia_earhart.htm.  We’d love to have you join us.

Robert Goodland

I'm sorry to learn -- belatedly; he passed on late last year -- that Robert Goodland has left us behind.

Goodland was the World Bank's environmental conscience, serving as a consultant to the Bank back in the '70s and then as its full-time environmental expert.  He was instrumental in establishing policies and procedures that tipped the Bank toward supporting projects that were environmentally sensible and sensitive to social and cultural costs.  In recent years the Bank seems to be backsliding, and the world is likely to be the worse for its lack of a Goodland as the environment's advocate.

How Can Good Things Possibly Do Any Harm?

In the latest issue of Cultural Survival, Mililani Trask has a good – well, I think it’s good – article called “UNESCO: (Dis)honoring Indigenous Rights” (http://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/unesco-dishonoring-indigenous-rights#sthash.3zBxAmxP.dpuf). Focusing on Hawai’i’s Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument and Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area, but generalizing to World Heritage Sites all over the world, Trask points out that such sites tend to be listed, or “inscribed,” with little or no effort at pre-decisional consultation with the indigenous groups that live in them or use them in their traditional cultural, spiritual, and economic pursuits.  Understandably and rightly, I think, she deplores this.

Alert readers may not be surprised that I think the issue Trask raises is essentially the same one I wrote about a couple of days ago with reference to H.R. 1459, the bill to require review of Antiquities Act withdrawals from the public domain under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).  Fans of World Heritage Listing and Antiquities Act withdrawals alike don’t think such actions need environmental impact assessment because, hell, what impacts could they possibly have?  They’re GOOD!  For the same reason, proponents of listing and withdrawal tend not to feel compelled to talk with those affected by the actions, because after all, the actions are GOOD, so anybody who has qualms about them must be a rotter.

I’m not opposed to World Heritage Listing, or to Antiquities Act withdrawals, but dammit, the fact that an action seems good to us – ANY of us – doesn’t mean it doesn’t have downsides that ought to be considered, thought through, and maybe mitigated somehow.  Nor does it mean that nobody’s innocent ox gets gored by such actions, and a decent sensitivity to the interests of fellow-occupants of the planet ought to require that we talk with those affected, consult them, and look for ways to respect their values. 

I recommend Mililani Trask’s article, and suggest that readers give thought to its broad implications.

Clovis Carpetbaggers:Law, Ethics and Machiavelli -- Guest Post by Larry Lahren

An 11,000 Year Old Burial in Park County, Montana: Law, Ethics and Respect

By Larry A. Lahren, Ph.D

“ It is not their intrinsic value as evidence that makes these bones newsworthy; rather the spin applied in disclosing that evidence.” (Roger Downey, Riddle of the Bones: Politics, Science, Race and the Story of Kennewick Man -2000).

 In May 1968, while removing fill material with a front-end loader on Mel and Helen Anzick’s property near Wilsall, Montana, equipment operator Ben Hargis saw a prehistoric stone tool fall out of the bucket. Along the edge of a prominent outcrop, where Flathead Creek and the Shields River join, Ben found the gravesite of a one to two year old male child, interred with about 115 red-ochre covered tools.

This burial is the most significant Paleoindian site in North America – representing the earliest evidence of religion in the Western Hemisphere and the oldest, most complete, assemblage of grave goods (funerary items) left by the Clovis culture that lived here at least 11,000 years ago.

From 1968 to 2001, I tried to ensure that this burial site received the archaeological, legal and ethical respect it deserved.

Recently, an international research team led by Professor Eske Willersev, Director of the Center for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, implied in the media, that they followed, respectful, legal and ethical guidelines during the course of their genetic studies.

But did this happen?

House Bill Number 165, the Montana Repatriation (Reburial) Act states:

“…both common law and legal decisions have consistently recognized that human skeletal remains are not property abandoned when interred. Discoverers, therefore, have no right of ownership, and they cannot confer a right of ownership to another. Neither a private nor public person, other than a descendant of a culturally affiliated group, can legally claim ownership of human skeletal remains or funerary objects.”

More than a year ago, I was advised that genetic studies of the Clovis child were complete. Professor Willersev asked me to give the project my after-the-fact blessing and to be one of 42 co-authors on an article to appear in Nature magazine (February 13, 2014). Another request was to "grease the wheels" and  arrange for Native contact in Montana. I declined on legal and ethical grounds and suggested the researchers follow the legal process and formally contact, the State Archaeologist, the Montana Burial Board and Montana Tribal Leaders. In fact, in the forty-six years since the site was found, no attempt has been made to follow this legally mandated process.

At a pre-publication meeting in Montana, on September 21, 2013, Professor Willersev had a problem. Studies were already complete and he had skirted the State Archaeologist, the Montana Burial Board and the Tribes. So how could he show that he had followed the legal and ethical guidelines to conduct destructive tests on the skeletal remains before publication?  To partially reduce Professor Willersev’s angst, I invited Shane Doyle, Crow tribal member and adjunct professor in Native American studies at Montana State University, along with a teacher and students from Crow Agency to visit the site the next day. This would have been the first time any Native Americans had been to the site, and to me,  and would have been an introductory way of introducing the site into Montana Native American education programs. 

Shane had no knowledge of the genetic studies, or the legal and ethical issues.  Thus, I made it clear to Professor Willersev that Shane was an independent visitor — not a representative of the Tribes, the University or any other entity.

After I explained the burial context, Professor Willersev then stated that the Clovis child shared 80 % of the same genetics (cultural affiliation) with contemporary Native Americans.  When asked what he thought should be done, Shane replied, “Speaking from the heart, I think you should put him back now [repatriation].”  To implement the process, Shane then agreed to be an unofficial liaison with the Montana Tribes. During a whirlwind tour to various Montana reservations, Montana Tribal leaders asked the Crow to pursue repatriation of the child's   remains. The present plan is for Crow Sundance Priest, Larson Medicine Horse, to oversee the ceremony at the site in June, 2014.

But look at the duplicity, spin and misrepresentation of Shane's role which appeared in Rex Dalton’s article in the February 20, 2014, issue of Spiegel Online:

“…Shane Doyle of the Crow Nation gave permission for the DNA analysis of the 12,600 year old bones.” 

For nearly 50 years, various “Clovis Carpetbaggers” have denied the burial associations, claimed various types of “ownership”, tried to buy the artifacts and used the site for institutional and individual opportunism.  I see the same pattern in the current genetic study-which raises the question- do scientific ends justify illegal and unethical means? And, can Native Americans ever trust and respect the people that “study” them and their ancestors- without feeling duped?

 Larry A. Lahren, North American Archaeologist, resides in Livingston, Montana and owns Anthro Research, Inc., an independent archaeology firm created in 1971. He is author of “Homeland: An archaeologist’s view of Yellowstone Country’s past.

Larry A. Lahren Ph.D

North American Archaeologist

Box 1218

Livingston, Mt. 59047

406 222 3168 223 3168

larrylahren@msn.com

    

Help! Help! Save the Antiquities Act!

There is much hand wringing in U.s. conservation and preservation circles about H.R. 1459, just passed by the House of Representatives.  To hear organizations like the National Trust for Historic Preservation tell it, H.R. 1459, if adopted by the Senate and signed by the president (neither being very likely) will ring the death knell for the Antiquities Act of 1906, America’s first “cultural resource” statute.

Well……

First off, archaeologists can breathe easy; H.R. 1459 does nothing to the thin protections given antiquities on federal and Indian lands by the Antiquities Act.  What it does affect is the president’s authority to designate national monuments.

And what does it do to that authority? 

1.       It says the president can’t designate more than one monument per state per presidential term.

2.       It says that a monument can’t include private property without the owner’s consent.

3.       It requires an environmental impact statement (EIS) if the designation “affects” more than 5,000 acres, but declares such a designation automatically categorically excluded from review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) if it “affects” 5,000 acres or less; and

4.       It requires that a feasibility study be done AFTER the designation, reporting on its costs.

Rather less than a gut-shot to the Antiquities Act, I’d say.

Now, I don’t think H.R. 1459 is a particularly good bill.  Item 1 above strikes me as arbitrary and capricious.  Item 2 is irrelevant, since the Antiquities Act authorizes withdrawals only of public land (with provision for accepting voluntarily given private rights).  But item 4 seems like a prudent enough measure, and the first part of item 3 strikes me as simple good government.

Environmentalists are thundering about how absurd it is to require an EIS on a monument designation; after all, monument designation is a GOOD THING that can’t possibly have environmental impacts.

Right, just like all those good green energy projects now screwing up the western deserts can’t have any impacts because they're GOOD for the environment.  And tell the local residents whose lifeways and economies have been substantially altered by the establishment of parks and monuments that such things have no impacts.  Are they “good” on balance?  Maybe so, but they aren’t necessarily devoid of adversities, and those adversities ought to be considered before a designation decision is made.  That’s the fundamental rationale underlying NEPA.

The second part of item 3 above – the automatic categorical exclusion for designations of 5,000 acres or less – is foolish but typical of a Congress that doesn’t really understand NEPA.   Congress shouldn’t go around deciding what’s categorically excluded; that (ostensibly substantive) decision should be made on the merits, by agencies with the expertise to do so.  But the idea of considering the environmental impacts of a federal government action – including (maybe especially) one that looks like a slam-dunk good thing – is simply good sense and prudent government.

There may be occasions when the president ought to be able to designate something without thinking about its impacts first – maybe where some utterly dreadful land use is pending that can’t be stopped without such a designation.  Seemingly to address such occasions, according to “TheHill.com:”

Before final passage, the House passed a manager's amendment clarifying that monument  designations of 5,000 acres or less could still be made by the President temporarily to protect sensitive land, after which a formal NEPA process would have to be followed within three years. This passed in a voice vote.

(http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/votes/201853-house-votes-to-slow-national-monument-designation#ixzz2xAFHG5e1)

This amendment seems a bit pointless, since 5,000-acre or smaller designations had already been categorically excluded, but oh well….

The notion that the president shouldn’t have to consider the environmental impacts of a proposed action seems like a strange one for conservationists and preservationists to espouse, but this sort of simpleminded inability to achieve balance or think through logical inconsistencies seems typical of our times.  Our leaders can’t sit down and work things out – whether the things are health care, social security, doing something about international crises, or even things as minor as implementing the Antiquities Act.  Instead the Right spends its time attacking shadows and the Left spends its time viewing with alarm.

Giving Up on Washington

Robert Kaiser, long-time reporter, columnist, editor and most recently managing editor of the Washington Post, has a brilliant, elegant opinion piece in today’s (Sunday, March 2) paper -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-republicans-lost-their-mind-democrats-lost-their-soul-and-washington-lost-its-appeal/2014/02/28/2ef5429c-9d89-11e3-9ba6-800d1192d08b_story.html.  It’s his swan song; he retired last month and moved to New York.  It’s entitled “How Republicans Lost Their Mind, Democrats Lost Their Soul, and Washington Lost Its Appeal.”  It sums up a great deal of what’s gone wrong in what passes for our government over the last half-century.

Kaiser is just a year younger than I am, and though he came to DC a decade or so before I did and has obviously been much more a part of its life than I could even imagine being, much of what he says (everything, actually, except his fondness for our baseball team the Nats) goes for me too.  I came to DC in 1975, and returned in 1979, with high hopes of accomplishing things.  At the time, this was a place where things COULD be accomplished.  For all the reasons Kaiser articulates, it no longer seems that way.

I’ve recently been corresponding with a number of people about what might be done, as its fiftieth anniversary approaches, to reform the National Historic Preservation Act, and with a somewhat smaller group about improving the National Environmental Policy Act.  As readers of this blog and my recent books know, I think it’s painfully obvious that the implementation of both laws has become thoroughly lost in the weeds of bureaucratic process and been corrupted by self-interest.  The first set of discussions has recently resulted in the sad conclusion that there’s nothing to do but write or edit another book to be ignored; the second set hasn’t gotten beyond sharing horror stories and wishing for solutions that remain beyond realistic conception. 

There was a time – as recently as the 1990s – when there were people in Congress who were interested enough in good government to give the time of day to ideas for reform and improvement, and there were people in government agencies who were interested in something beyond survival to retirement.  There were people in the non-governmental sector who could perceive value in doing things beyond  desperately defending the status quo.  There were people willing to think, work, and take risks.  As far as I can see, those times are gone.

Kaiser predicts that things will change.  “I think,” he says, “America is in for discontinuity.  Something is going to happen to change this awful game we are playing.”  I hope he’s right, and I hope the discontinuity isn’t too damaging to the nation and the world.   But I see no way to hasten its coming or nudge it in any particular direction.  And unlike Kaiser, I can’t even gin up any enthusiasm for the Nats.

What I Sent the State Department about the Keystone Pipeline

It's the last week for public comment on whether it's in the national interest to approve or deny the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline.  Though I have no illusions whatever about the efficacy of such public comments, I feel an obligation to heave them into the churning blades of the government windmill, so below is what I just filed with the State Department via www.regulations.gov.

March 7 is the deadline for comments; you might want to make your views known.

Here's what I sent:

My views of the proposed Keystone Pipeline project are based on 50 years' experience in and out of government working with federal land use planning and environmental impact assessment (EIA) -- sometimes on behalf of project proponents, sometimes on behalf of opponents, often working for and with ostensibly objective federal and state regulators.  I have learned to my great regret that as our EIA system is organized, the only thing one can be confident of is that any assessment is likely to be biased in favor of whatever project is under consideration.  The notion of an objective assessment of environmental impacts to inform decision-making has long since become archaic.  As far as I can tell, the assessment of the Keystone Pipeline's impacts is consistent with what has become our standard model -- an apologia for the project masquerading as an objective analysis.

Clearly the pipeline will have impacts on the environment, as does any such large project, both in its construction and in its operation.  Clearly too, it will facilitate the continued exploitation of Canada's tar sands, with all its immediate and long-term impacts.  By doing so it will contribute to our continuing dependence on fossil fuels with all the impacts on air, water, climate and other aspects of the environment that this dependence entails.

The key question seems to be whether Canada will continue to exploit the tar sands if the U.S. does not permit the pipeline.  If one assumes that it will, then it may be reasonable to argue that the pipeline is the lesser of two evils in that it may (a big MAY) be less damaging to the immediate environment of the U.S. than trucking the stuff or shipping it by rail.  But more and more forces are gathering in Canada and elsewhere to oppose the taking of the tar sands, with all the close-in and world-wide impacts that taking has.  Notable among the opposition are Canada's First Nations, with the support of their sister tribes south of the border, and those Nations control a good deal of the land across which an alternative route to the ocean would cross.  The tide MAY be turning -- or, of course, it may not.  The question is, which side is the United States going to be on?  Which side of history has our bet?

In the interests of its own citizens and everyone on earth who breathes and enjoys living here, I believe the U.S. should support the First Nations and their supporters in Canada and say no to the Keystone Pipeline.  Is this in our national interest?  Since as a nation we're part of the world, since we pontificate a great deal about being responsible world citizens and about taking care of the global environment, since ALL nations would be well advised to do what they can to protect that environment and reduce our contribution to climate change, I think the answer is obvious.  Yes, it's in the national interests of the U.S. to deny the permit for the Keystone Pipeline.

Thomas F. King

Don’t Scorn the Colander

You can’t always get what you want…

But if you try sometime, you just might find

That you get what you need.

                                The Rolling Stones

One of the most striking images I’ve seen from the barricades in Kiev was of a beefy middle-aged protester wearing a colander on his head.  Not much protection from an AK47 round, I thought, but it might deflect a mis-thrown rock or even a grenade.

I was reminded of the colander-armored man yesterday when I fell into Facebook conversations with two archaeologists employed by Indian tribes.  Both were distressed and depressed by the fact that Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act doesn’t afford absolute protection to historic places.  One of them was sadly misinformed about what Section 106 DOES afford – misled by the deeply irresponsible and flatly wrong book Practicing Archaeology by Neuman and Sanford – but both seemed to feel that since the law didn’t give them the absolute authority to stop projects that they or their tribes thought too damaging, there was simply no reason to invoke it or insist on compliance with its regulations.

So throw away your colander, rebel.  Go to the barricades buck-ass naked.  That makes a lot of sense.

There are good public-policy reasons that Section 106 doesn’t prohibit the destruction of historic places, but even if you think it should, it’s flat-out stupid to ignore it, or buy into lazy, mindless, self-interested interpretations like those in Practicing Archaeology, just because it doesn’t give you everything you want.

Section 106 prescribes a process of consultation, which at its best becomes one of negotiation, which ought to lead to responsible compromise solutions to development/preservation conflicts.  Participate in it knowledgeably and you just might find that you get – if not all you want, at least what you need.  Throw away your colander and you’re likely to get beaned by a flying brick before anyone even has the chance to shoot you.

In a Bookstore Near You

Consultation and Cultural Heritage: Let Us Reason Together -- the new book by Claudia Nissley and me on the nuts and bolts of consultation under laws like Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act -- has emerged from the printer and is available from major booksellers and especially from its publisher,  Left Coast Press -- See http://www.lcoastpress.com/book.php?id=504.

Let Us Reason is built around the definition of "consultation" found in the Section 106 regulations of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, but it tries to generalize so as to be relevant to any consultation, anywhere in the world, under any environmental, historic preservation, cultural heritage, or planning law or no law at all.

All too often, "consultation" about cultural heritage and environmental impacts is reduced to pro-forma exercises like public hearings, comments on documents, and the like, in which maybe people excercise freedom of speech, but nobody's obligated to do anything about what they say.  Consultation ought to be a two-way street, a discussion, an argument, a reasoned discourse leading to some kind of conclusion that everyone feels was fairly reached.  That seems pretty simple and obvious, but it's remarkable how seldom consultation about government decision-making seems to work that way.

Our book doesn't offer any earth-shaking insights, but we hope it will remind people of some very basic principles that most of us learn as children but sadly seem to forget when we become adult bureaucrats and consultants.  We think it will be useful to professionals involved in cultural heritage work, environmental impact assessment, and land use planning, as well as to communities, landowners, indigenous groups, and organizations trying to affect plans for potentially damaging projects.

A Matter of Attitude

Anyone curious as to how at least the more educated of those Europeans who colonized this continent viewed its natural environment and native inhabitants might want to take a look at William Robertson’s 1777 History of America.  For instance:

The labour and operations of man not only improve and embellish the earth, but render it more wholesome, and friendly to life.  When any region lies neglected and destitute of cultivation, the air stagnates in the woods, putrid exhalations arise from the waters; the surface of the earth, loaded with rank vegetation, feels not the purifying influence of the sun; the malignity of the distempers natural to the climate increases, and new maladies no less noxious are engendered.  Accordingly, all the provinces of America, when first discovered, were found to be remarkably unhealthy (Robertson 1777:Book IV:17).

The colonizers had their work cut out for them – get to work and embellish the continent, render it wholesome and friendly to life.  We can all agree, no doubt, that they were very effective, and we’ve all followed proudly in their footsteps.

Robertson, William

1777    The History of America.  London, A. Strahan.  See http://books.google.com/books?id=_ONOAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22William+Robertson%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=7lXZUpKDM5fKsQSmoILIAw&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

"Looters or Lovers?"

Today I posted an ancient, unfinished paper on Academia.edu, and have been surprised at how much attention it's getting, in the U.S., the U.K., Peru, and elsewhere.  Here's the 2014 preface I stuck on it to explain:

LOOTERS OR LOVERS:
STUDYING THE NON-ARCHAEOLOGICAL USE OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESOURCES

2014 Preface

In 1989-90, I was engaged as a subcontractor to CEHP Inc., a Washington DC-based consulting firm specializing in environmental and historic preservation work, on a project for the Society for American Archaeology (SAA).  The SAA was engaged in an initiative aimed at gaining an improved understanding of “archaeological looting.”  With funding from the National Park Service (NPS), the SAA engaged CEHP to look into the definition of studies that might be funded to advance the purposes of this initiative.  CEHP asked me to summarize studies already performed and develop recommendations.  I produced a draft report, which I submitted to CEHP, and CEHP submitted to the SAA, in January 1991.

The report was apparently not what the SAA, or perhaps NPS, expected, and the project fizzled to a halt.  The manuscript has languished in my attic ever since, in the form of a single hard copy.  I recently engaged Ms. Kelly Merrifield to re-type it; I am grateful for Kelly’s skillful assistance. 

The report is incomplete, notably in that it lacks a bibliography.  Somewhere in my attic, I think I have a box containing the sources used in the report’s construction, but this has not yet come to light.  The report is also, of course, now almost a quarter-century out of date.  Still, though, I think it contains some useful data – notably summaries of some very obscure gray literature – and that some of its observations and never acted-upon recommendations still merit consideration, with allowance for subsequent developments.  So, for whatever interest it may have, I am taking this opportunity to share it.

If you're interested, here's the paper's URL:  https://www.academia.edu/5909894/LOOTERSORLOVERS_STUDYINGTHENON-ARCHAEOLOGICALUSEOFARCHAEOLOGICAL_RESOURCES_2014Preface

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Blogging for Huffington Post

Thanks to Amelia Earhart (Thanks, AE!), I’ve been invited to contribute to the Huffington Post’s blog; here are links to my first two non-AE contributions:

On the Obama administration’s rotten record of dealing with tribes on “green” energy projects -- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-king/obama-green-energy-and-in_b_4645492.html

…. and on misrepresentations re. the Keystone XL Pipeline -- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-king/is-canada-being-jerked-ar_b_4661321.html

Due to space limitations, a modicum of sensitivity to what may appeal to a wide readership, and other minor complications, my posts to Huffington will be short and focused on relatively general matters; I’ll continue to burden readers with my longer, more obscure stuff here on CRM-Plus.

Where Are the Young Thinkers?

I’m talking with a publisher about editing a book series, tentatively called something like “Cultural Environment, Cultural Justice.”  The idea would be to publish relatively short books about topics somewhat outside the mainstream of or more inclusive than fields like “historic preservation”, “archaeology,” “CRM,” and the like as they’re commonly defined, focusing on maintaining/preserving what people and communities value in the environment – in the Americas and world-wide.

Reviewers of the series proposal have suggested – and I entirely agree – that I ought especially to look for young or at least new authors, who relate well to contemporary (and future?) technology and who are informed by the thinking of folks like those in the Occupy movement and Idle No More.  I’m all for it, but unsure where to find such authors.

I’m looking for books that will challenge the status quo(s) and lay out new and better – but at least arguably practical – ways of managing aspects of the cultural environment, broadly defined, and/or of managing the world’s impacts on aspects of that environment.  I'm not much interested in chest-pounding diatribes or obscure theorizing -- I think what we need are books that articulate problems and solutions, without being too hung up on current standard practice but with a recognition of political realities.

If you’re interested in doing a book (and you don’t HAVE to be young or otherwise “new”; I just want especially to encourage young and little-known people), or if you know of someone who might be interested (anywhere in the world, though I expect that the books will be published in English), please drop me a note at tfking106@aol.com, letting me know what you have in mind.  I should stress that nobody gets rich writing books of this kind, though they do (sometimes) produce royalties.

Thanks!

Tom

Historic Post Offices, Public Hearings, and Consultation

An Op-Ed by freelance writer Anna Hiatt on yesterday’s (1/21/2014) Washington Post “Fed Page” reported that Representatives José Serrano (D-NY) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif) have issued statements urging the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to hold up on its sales of historic post offices, pending studies by the Service’s inspector general and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP).  Ms. Hiatt correctly notes that old post offices are often important community assets, and that the communities they serve often object to their being closed and sold.

This is an old, long-standing problem, resulting from changes in demographics, transportation, the way mail is handled, and the growth of the internet, among other factors.  There is probably no ready solution to it, and each case doubtless presents unique characteristics.  Each case where there are community concerns ought to get the kind of consultation among concerned parties that’s required by the regulations implementing Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), leading either to an agreement about whether and how to proceed, or to a final high-level recommendation by the ACHP.  That’s simply what the law requires.

Unfortunately, to judge from Ms. Hiatt’s article, neither side is paying any attention to what the law requires.  The USPS, she says wants to fast-track its sales by exempting them, or some of them, from review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).  The two congresspeople and other concerned parties are calling for more “public input” – specifically public hearings.

Which, if the USPS graciously gives in and grants, will accomplish precisely nothing.  

All a public hearing does is get the public heard – that is, those members of the public who attend.  It doesn’t get what they say attended to; it doesn’t  force an agency to change its mind.  It merely lets the public spout off.  The agency, having generously given the public this hankered-for opportunity, can then retire to its Olympian heights and make its decision, with no necessary attention to what the public has said.  If it's said anything sensible, which is doubtful given the counterproductive structure and dynamics of the average public hearing.  

Claudia Nissley and I discuss this at some length in our forthcoming book, Consultation and Cultural Heritage: Let Us Reason Together (http://www.amazon.com/Consultation-Cultural-Heritage-Reason-Together/dp/1611323991), and conclude that while "Americans love public hearings, ... they're not consultation, ... and often impede sensible consultation."  

Consultation being what the law (not NEPA, but Sections 106 and 110 of NHPA) requires.  Not public hearings, not public input, but consultation, which means sitting down with all the concerned parties and trying to work out an agreement.

It’s easy enough to understand why the USPS would want to obscure and ignore this legal requirement, but what would be very strange if it weren’t so commonplace is that the representatives in Congress, who must have staffs to look into things like this, could be so dumb as to do the same.  Why promote public hearings instead of insisting that the USPS do the kind of reasoning-together that might do some good, and that the law actually requires?  Consultation has a fighting chance of resulting in some kind of agreement that meets the needs of both the USPS and the communities that value their post offices.  Public hearings, by themselves, have no chance of doing anything but generating hot air.

Traditional Cultural Properties in Cambodia

Julia Wallace, Executive Editor of the Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh, had an interesting op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times -- see http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/opinion/workers-of-the-world-faint.html?_r=0.  It’s about garment factory workers in Cambodia who have been experiencing mass fainting incidents on the job.  The faintings are attributed to the workers' possession by neak ta – spirit beings who are angry, in the cases cited, because the construction of the garment factories uprooted banyan trees in which the spirits reside.  A neak ta, according to Wallace, is “strongly associated with a specific natural feature – a rock, a tree, a patch of soil.”

In the United States, of course, a neak ta’s rock, tree, or piece of ground would – if everyone was paying attention to the relevant guidelines – be identified as a traditional cultural property, probably eligible for the National Register of Historic Places and subject to consideration under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), as well as in environmental assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).  The Cambodian faintings illustrate why such consideration – which ought to feature respectful consultation with those human beings who believe in neak ta – is a good idea.

Maybe you believe in neak ta or some equivalent (e.g. Elves in Iceland, ancestor spirits in China, Coyote or other spirit-beings in North America).  Or maybe you suspect as Wallace seems to that the fainting epidemic is a device for drawing attention to poor working conditions and low wages among garment workers.  Or maybe you’d rather say it’s all nonsense and the workers are just finding a clever way to slack off.  Whatever you believe, you surely ought to acknowledge that whoever built the garment factories set their operators up for problems by failing to consider impacts on the neak ta and their trees. 

Would it have been so hard to consider those impacts?  To talk with the people of the surrounding community before designing the factory, finding out what they valued in the environment, and trying to do something about it?  In one case Wallace mentions, the enraged neak ta apparently could have been mollified had there been “ritual propitiation” and “apology.”  Would this have been so hard to arrange?  And shouldn’t such consultation and efforts to mitigate the construction project’s impacts be a central part of good planning?  Even if the power of neak ta is wholly in the heads of the garment workers, wouldn’t it be wise to put the workers’ minds at rest, before they start passing out over their sewing machines?

Private Curatorship: An Answer to "The Curation Crisis?

I can’t now find the post, but someone this morning (28 December 2013) posted a link to an article in the Baton Rouge, Louisiana Advocate -- http://theadvocate.com/home/7777931-125/state-warehouse-seeks-funds-for

The article begins by describing the sorry situation at the Louisiana state facility charged with caring for the archaeological collection from El Nuevo Constante, a 1766 Spanish shipwreck excavated in 1979.  There is supposedly a federal-state fund earmarked to support the facility (which I take from the article to be a general state curation facility), but money from it is being siphoned off by the state legislature to be applied to other purposes.   The State Archaeologist is quoted as saying that he barely has money to pay a single staff member. 

The article then segues an archaeological project being carried out in advance of state medical center construction, which is producing lots and lots of artifacts – far too many to be accommodated by the state’s storage facility.  The conclusion, ascribed to the archaeologist in charge, is that “the collection will have to be culled.”

“Culled.”  On the chicken ranch where I grew up, that meant chopping the heads off the chickens we couldn’t market and consigning them to the stewpot.  As applied to archaeology, it means taking the artifacts and other material you can’t fit in your curatorial facility and –

Well, “and” what?  Probably dumping it back into your excavations and burying it, or consigning it to a landfill.  It almost certainly does not mean giving it away or – worse yet – selling it, because that would encourage private ownership of artifacts, and we all know – our professional organizations and professors beat it into our heads – that private ownership of artifacts is a sin.

The Advocate article describes a situation with which most archaeologists and archaeological curators are all too familiar -- it's been discussed from time to time in professional and government circles as "the curation crisis."  In a nutshell: we just have too much stuff, and not enough space and money to take care of it all.  

We complain about the curation crisis all the time; we wring our hands and bemoan the situation; we seek money for new and better and expanded curatorial facilities, and sometimes we get it.  But increasingly we don’t; governments have other priorities. 

So we adapt – by storing stuff under suboptimal conditions (in cardboard boxes under desks in offices, in musty attics and soggy basements), or by “culling” and dumping stuff, or by not collecting it in the first place, which raises questions about why those laws requiring attention to archaeological sites even exist.

Is there an alternative? 

Whenever I see an article like the Advocate piece dealing with a shipwreck, I refer it to my friend Greg Stemm, CEO of Odyssey Marine Exploration in Tampa, Florida – a firm that does (among other things) very good deep-ocean archaeology and very selectively markets some of what it recovers.  After reading the Advocate article, Greg commented dryly that he suspected it was just the tip of the iceberg – that many, many collections are being “culled” or just left to deteriorate, but that nobody in the archaeological and museum communities want to talk about it.  I think he’s right.

Greg also pointed out that he and International Law professor David Bederman of Emory University had published a paper in 2010 detailing the problem and proposing as a solution a program called “Private Curatorship.”  It’s at http://www.shipwreck.net/pdf/OMEPapers14-PrivateCurators.pdf, and probably hasn’t gotten much attention.  It was published by Odyssey, after all (which has also published a number of excellent reports on specific research projects), and it’s an article of faith among archaeologists that commercial salvage firms don’t publish their results, so when they do, they’re invariably ignored.

You probably won’t get cooties if you read it, though, and I’d really suggest that you take a look, trying to keep an open mind.  Called “Virtual Collections & Private Curators: a Model for the Museum of the Future,” the paper documents the fact that collections all over the world are languishing in substandard facilities, and that there simply isn’t enough public money or political will to take care of them all.  It goes on to propose a program under which a museum would “cull” its collections but not just dump them back in the ground or into a landfill; instead they would selectively sell the stuff with rigorous controls designed to ensure that the purchasers would care for what they purchased, keep it together, make it available for future research, and participate in creating a widely accessible web-based catalogue including extensive digital imagery.  Collectors of artifacts would become the allies of museums and archaeologists, rather than our enemies.

Acknowledging that a range of international and regional standards discourage even thinking about such an option, Stemm and Bederman argue persuasively that it is not in fact illegal, and based on Odyssey’s practical experience they think it would work.  Collections would be preserved, collectors and other members of the interested public would be engaged, and the museums would both free up space and gain some needed revenue.  And – they don’t say this, but I do – museums and archaeologists would come to look a bit more like reasonable citizens and less like arrogant, self-congratulatory dogs in the manger.

I have to say that I’m less sanguine than Stemm and Bederman are about how many collectors might want to become “private curators” under the terms they propose, but I’d be delighted to be proved wrong.  And Stemm's and Bederman's proposal is only an initial one -- there may be many variants on the theme that would be worth consideration.  One thing that’s certain is that we won’t find out what's workable if nobody tries it.  

So hey, you folks in Louisiana, or anyplace else that’s got a problem caring for all the stuff you’ve excavated or expect to excavate, take a look at http://www.shipwreck.net/pdf/OMEPapers14-PrivateCurators.pdf and consider how what Stemm and Bederman propose might apply to your situation. 

I know, I know, you fear hellfire and damnation, or at least being hounded out of the profession if you consider -- oh the horror of even saying it! – selling an artifact.  Better to avert your eyes, close your ears, and let your collections rot.  But you know, I don’t think there’s much empirical evidence that selling artifacts puts you on the down-elevator to hell; is there nobody out there who’s willing to give this a try? 

Mark Trail (Not Territory)

I can't help myself.  I'm a dedicated daily reader, over my morning coffee, of the Washington Post comic pages.  And not just the hip strips like "Doonsbury,"  or the ones like "Pickles" that speak to me personally, but even the likes of -- well, "Mark Trail."

 

"Mark Trail" is a -- umm -- well, it's pretty much straight out of the fifties.  Its eponymous protagonist, Trail (not Territory) is supposedly a nature journalist; he lives on some sort of private wildlife refuge with his wife -- Cherry! -- and.... well, never mind.  He has adventures contending with poachers and other such environmental evil-doers, though only rarely with, say, land developers and big government agencies.

 

Anyhow, right now he's fallen in with a really nice old man who lives in a cabin in the woods and has a fabulous collection of -- you guessed it, folks, Indian artifacts.  Which some bad guys are trying to steal.  Actually, they've stolen them and are trying to pin the theft on Trail (not Territory), but we can be sure that Mark will foil them in the end and all will be made right. 

 

"Right," of course, being that the nice old collector will get his collection back.  Which is what makes the strip worth more than a yawn over coffee.  There's not a hint, not a glimmer of a notion anywhere in this stretch of Trail (not Territory) that there could be anything wrong with the old man's collecting artifacts.

 

Now, nothing's been said or shown about how he collects them -- whether he digs or is just a surface collector -- and there've been no close-ups of the collection; my impression is that it's mostly projectile points (spear and arrowheads to you non-specialists), but I can't really say.  No obvious human bones.  But be this as it may, the point (sic) is that all the sound and fury that echoes around the hallowed halls of archaeology and in parts of Indian Country over the legality and propriety of private artifact ownership seems to have gone right past the composers of Mark Trail (not Territory).  It simply hasn't registered, isn't on their radar screens.

 

I am not posting this to encourage people to go beat up on the cartoonists, like folks are berating National Geographic for its "Diggers" show.  Quite the contrary; I post it to suggest that we archaeologists are way, way, way out of touch with the American (and worldwide) mainstream when we indiscriminately slap labels like "looter" on everybody who ever picks up an artifact and doesn't turn it in to a museum.  The public is never going to buy the notion that a nice old guy in the woods who collects artifacts is in the same league with, say, somebody who digs up graves or pecks rock art off the walls of caves.  And I daresay a thoughtful public might even hesitate to castigate someone who does those latter things if, say, the graves are about to be bulldozed for a wind-generator array or the cave's about to be blown up for a mine.  I've said it before and always been ignored, but I'll say it again; we ought to take a more nuanced view of artifact collection and ownership, so as to build alliances with, rather than alienating, nice old men in the woods and their nature-writer chums.  When we insist that nobody should own artifacts except the fine academic institutions for which we happen to work, then rightly or wrongly we look a lot like we're just marking territory (not trail).

GAO and CRS Say: "Down with Public Participation"(?)

Leslie Barras has continued her string of thought-provoking reports for the National Trust for Historic Preservation with Honoring Our Nation's Veterans: Saving Their Places of Health Care and Healing (http://www.preservationnation.org/information-center/saving-a-place/va-hospital/NTHP-VA-Report-Exec-Summary-Rec.pdf).  The report is critical of how the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) manages its substantial inventory of historic buildings and districts, though (speaking as a veteran and a contractor to VA) I find it refreshingly even-handed and sympathetic toward both VA's mission and the pressures exerted on it by Congress and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

One thing that Barras reveals -- which I guess doesn't surprise me because it supports my growing belief that everyone in Congress and the Obama administration has had their brains fed to zombies -- is this, on page 91.  After discussing a 1990s VA initiative to set up stakeholder advisory committees on medical facility closures, which she identifies as an example of the "Dialogue, Decide and Deliver" (DDD) model espoused by environmental justice groups, she reports that the Government Accountability (sic) Office (GAO) --

...criticized the VA’s inclusionary approach as inviting “protracted conflict” and “piecemeal” decision making because of the involvement of special-interest groups who would tend to “avoid difficult choices by focusing only on marginal changes to the status quo . . .”  The GAO then recommended an “independent” planning approach, which would consist of using VA planners or outside consultants to develop and analyze data upon which the VA would make ... decisions, followed by providing “sufficient information” to external stakeholders to “understand and support” decisions already made.  As opposed to the inclusive “DDD” public process, the GAO’s proposal is rooted in an antiquated and exclusionary public relations process called “DAD” (“Decide, Announce, and Defend”).  From the perspectives of several interviewees involved in past and current deliberations about possible realignments and closures of VHA facilities, ...  it appears that the GAO’s “DAD” approach has been followed by the VA.

Similarly, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) has identified “stakeholder conflict” as complicating federal agency disposal efforts, noting that there is no “government-wide real property guidance for addressing stakeholder conflicts”. Several bills have been filed in Congress that purport to “reform” public involvement in federal real property management. One example is the Civilian Property Realignment Act (CPRA) of 2012, which would shorten the statute of limitations for citizen suits brought for violations of NEPA during disposal of federal property from six years to 60 days (CPRA of 2012, § 18(a)(2)).

If Barras is to be believed – and I’ve always found her reports to be pretty much on-target – we have not only the perennial jokesters in the House of Representatives, but the ostensibly knowledgeable and objective GAO and CRS proposing to turn the clock back to the 1950s, when government decided what was best for its citizens (Dam those rivers!  Demolish those slums!) and hired PR flacks to persuade the flaccid public that it was the Right Thing To Do – instead of (horrors!) actually consulting with the unwashed multitudes.  Unfortunately – as detailed in the book that Claudia Nissley and I are publishing next year via Left Coast Press (http://www.lcoastpress.com/book.php?id=504), there’s every evidence that she’s right.

Barras comments:

The importance of public involvement in decisions regarding assets that are ultimately public assets, and public heritage, may not be a priority for auditors concerned with the numerical accounting required to prepare balance sheets and federal financial statements. However, the apparent resistance to public involvement noted in the examples above seems antithetical to basic concepts of fairness, rights to expression, and transparency in a democracy, not to mention current federal law.

I, for one, couldn’t agree more.

Consultation and Cultural Heritage: Let Us Reason Together

Left Coast Press will very shortly publish Consultation and Cultural Heritage: Let Us Reason Together, by Claudia Nissley and me (See http://www.lcoastpress.com/book.php?id=504).  The website says it will be available in March, 2014; we’re hoping it’ll be out a bit sooner than that.

Innumerable environmental and cultural resource/heritage laws, regulations, standards and guidelines, in the U.S. and throughout the world, call for “consultation,” but few say much about what it’s supposed to entail.  As a result, there’s a tendency to substitute things like formletters and public hearings for real consultation.

Our book’s subtitle – from Isaiah 1:18 – encapsulates our view that consultation is supposed to entail reasoning together, to seek a mutually agreeable outcome to some sort of actual or potential conflict or problem.  As the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) puts it:

Consultation means the process of seeking, discussing, and considering the views of other participants, and, where feasible, seeking agreement with them …. (36 CFR §800.16(f)).

Our book is built around the ACHP definition, discussing what each of those called-for actions – “seeking,” “discussing,” “considering” and “seeking agreement” – involves, suggesting effective ways of carrying out each such action, and flagging ways of “consulting” that are, to put it blandly, less then effective.  It’s based on our collective sixty-plus years of work in consultation under the National Historic Preservation Act and other U.S. laws, but it’s designed for use not only under U.S. law but wherever consultation about environmental and heritage matters takes place.  It would be nice to think that it may help improve the quality and effectiveness of consultation about such matters, but neither of us is holding breath.

And the cover art?  Rock art in Baja California, showing people throwing up their hands, what else?