CRM


Crisis in CRM archaeology is actually a changing of a generation, Part I

“…CRM, the most industrious part of American archaeology, is an aged industry that has worn out its welcome. American society values historic preservation, but is also increasingly resistant to standardized federal compliance.” Lawrence E. Moore, CRM: Beyond its Peak (SAA Archaeological Record 6[1]:30–33). I love it when I read something […]


Don't be that desperate archaeology job seeker

Lingering problems in the CRM archaeology industry

Call it fortune or misfortune, but I just ran across one of the most amazing articles/critiques of the CRM industry that I’ve ever seen I print. It’s called “Archaeological Research in the Context of Cultural Resource Management: Pushing back in the 1990s” by Robert G. Elston. This article was published […]


Job Descriptions are Central to a CRM Archaeology HASP

I realized how hard creating a CRM archaeology-specific health and safety plan (HASP) can be while talking about improving archaeology workplace health and safety with my friend (the President of Northwest Safety and Risk Services in Boise, Idaho). In our conversation, I described some of the situations I found myself […]


Developing Independent Research Topics from CRM Projects

 With the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) conference just behind us and the call for papers for the 2014 Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA) conference just around the corner, I started thinking about all the CRM archaeology projects I’ve worked on that I turned into academic presentations at these two […]


Why do Archaeologists Care about Looters, Part 2

(In Part 1 of this series, I discussed how the field of archaeology is negatively affected by its portrayal in the national media, specifically on NatGeo’s Diggers and Spike TVs Savage Family Diggers. I also addressed some relevant questions regarding why archaeologists may be angry with these “archaeology looter” shows—coming […]


CRM Archaeology Podcast Recap: March 2013

In case you didn’t already know, there’s a new archaeology podcast online. It started in late 2012 and, after some remodels and improvements, the CRM Archaeology Podcast has stormed into the Year of the Snake. And just like the Chinese zodiac Snake sign tells us, the podcast is keen, cunning, […]


Archaeology books are coming from blogs these days

Speeding Up the Experiential Learning Process

“Experience enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.” Franklin P. Jones How do you know when you’ve hit the “floor” of an Archaic Native American pithouse? How do you keep from digging right through the floor and losing the original context of any artifacts imbedded in […]


Personal Research: Keeping CRMers Sane Since 1966

The explosion of cultural resource management, heritage conservation, and historic preservation since the 1960s has resulted in a deluge of information on human pasts. Much of this information lies in the various technical reports written by companies around the world. This “grey literature” represents a database much larger than the […]


Archaeology supervisors: explain what you want your employees to do before they do it

New Arizona SHPO guidelines 2

I got to work, sat down, opened my email, and took a sip of coffee. As I waited for my computer to boot up, I jotted down a short to-do list of tasks I needed to complete that day. Then, I opened my email and took another coffee sip “You’ve […]