Before 1916: The Roots of National Park Service Community Archaeology Best Practices

Over the next three years (2015–17), the Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage will celebrate the centennial of the National Park Service (NPS), a federal government bureau within the Department of the Interior in the United States of America, through a series of articles about community and public archaeology in the national parks. When President Woodrow Wilson signed the Organic Act on 25 August 1916, there was ‘created in the Department of the Interior a service to be called the National Park Service’ that would ‘promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks, monuments, and reservations … to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations’ (16 USC 1). Archaeology has the potential to reveal information about past peoples in all units of the national park system and connect its meanings with communities and the public. In addition to parks, the NPS manages cultural resource programmes that support archaeology, such as community assistance through grants and the National Register of Historic Places. Together, the potential of NPS parks and programmes to conduct community and public archaeology projects across the nation is unparalleled by any other organization. Join us as we reflect on the history of community and public archaeology in the NPS over the past 100 years and look forward into our next century.

One best practice of today's NPS is community and public engagement in archaeology. ‘Community’ can refer to geographical places (such as a neighbourhood), descendant or culturally affiliated peoples, and/or individuals connected together by affinity or interest (such as avocational archaeologists). Community or public archaeology involves best practices and ethical commitments that ensure archaeological work does not benefit archaeology as a profession or archaeologists alone, but empowers the public to engage in heritage issues and be active participants in archaeological discovery. It is comprised of a constellation of practices, each with its own history: collaboration, consultation, working with descendants, and understanding why communities do archaeology. It also connects with the administrative history of the NPS and the ways it has created archaeological institutions within its structure that respond to new laws, social changes, or critical needs. The centennial of the NPS provides an opportunity to reflect on the origins of archaeologists’ best practices for working with the public and the range of communities it holds.

The roots of community or public archaeology in the NPS began well before 1916. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, people connected to archaeological sites through geography, lineage, or interest. Some of these communities consisted of local pothunters, relic hunters, or self-taught archaeologists. Others were part of a larger archaeological community of concerned citizens and advocates who lobbied for political protection of archaeological resources. They were part of state and local historical and archaeological societies, which in some places played critical roles in excavating and preserving sites. Others wished to support the development of archaeology as a profession, lending substantial philanthropic and financial resources to expeditions that supplied museums with artefacts. And yet others were more closely aligned with the definition of community or public archaeology today: local people who were directly or closely related descendants of peoples who inhabited archaeological places. All these communities collaborated with archaeologists on projects that tested best practices for archaeology and, upon reflection and honing, influenced community or public archaeology as we currently know it. In direct contrast to archaeology practices today, however, past activities primarily benefited individuals, museums or academic institutions, and scientists or archaeologists. Archaeological investigations tended not to give back to the communities in which they took place, but took up data and artefacts for the benefit of a few people, especially academics or pothunters, or institutions. The reaction to archaeology for the few, instead of archaeology for all the public's benefit, is the foundation to NPS community archaeology today.

Best practices in NPS community archaeology

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, archaeologists and communities tended not to see mutual benefits in working together. No unified ‘community archaeology’ existed. Archaeologists might embed themselves as participant-observers in the communities whose past they excavated, or be part of a community of academics or advocates. They might also ask the public for input to aid their work, such as to identify potential sites or the functions of the features being excavated. Such activities led to significant archaeological discoveries, to enhanced appreciation of past cultures by communities, and to public advocacy for archaeological stewardship. By examining the ways that archaeologists and communities have worked together in the past, archaeologists and the NPS have a better context for why best practices are appropriate, or how they came to be. Recognizing steps along the way to modern archaeology enables contemporary practitioners to appreciate patterns of engagement that work best to hook the public and increase involvement.

Best practice: collaboration and consultation with local communities

Collaboration with communities can help archaeologists gain insight into sites and artefacts that are culturally unfamiliar to them. It also enables communities to learn about their heritage from interdisciplinary vantage points and access data that reveals information that may not be captured in oral histories, traditions, or common knowledge. One form of collaboration, consultation, is part of the compliance process as established in contemporary Federal preservation law, but took place in a significantly less purposeful way prior to these laws being put into place. While collaboration with communities informed researchers’ archaeological studies, they were not empowered to direct an investigation's parameters, its research questions, or the deposition of the finds, not to mention demand respect of cultural materials or practices.

Before archaeology was a professional discipline of its own, travellers and explorers recorded their observations of Native American places in the USA. Some of them spoke with Native Americans for help interpreting the cultural landscape before them. For example, William Bartram, a naturalist, travelled throughout the Southeast beginning in 1773 to study local plants and animals. Bartram was the first to record some of the Native American sites in the region, coming into contact with the Cherokee and Creek tribes in the process. The tribes helped Bartram understand what he observed by using contemporary ceremonial structures belonging to the Creek as a basis for interpreting mound sites. Among the sites observed by Bartram were ceremonial mounds at Amelia Island, shellmounds at Lake Dexter, and an Indian village in Florida; ceremonial mounds at Fort James and Ocmulgee in Georgia; Yuchi Town (Figure 1), a Creek Indian Village (Kane and Keeton 1994, 81); and a ceremonial mound at Nucasse in Tennessee (Trigger 1989, 69). Many of these sites are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places; have been determined worthy of further study for possible inclusion on the National Register; or are preserved within national or state parks. Although Bartram spoke with Native peoples about the sites, his endeavour was to gather information for his own knowledge, rather than participate in a true exchange of ideas and information that benefitted himself and the tribes.

FIGURE 1. Painting by Martin Pate which depicts (upper left corner) the William Bartrum party arriving at the Yuchi Town (Creek) Indian village in July 1776.

Credit: Painting by Martin Pate. Courtesy of US Army, Fort Benning, Georgia USA.

Archaeologists’ collaboration with communities can also involve local contacts, who can lend their expertise to archaeological endeavours. In 1877–78, Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institution contracted with Dr Frank James, a physician in Osceola, Arkansas, to open mounds in his area and send specimens to Washington. They constituted the first documented collections from the area of Mississippi County in Arkansas (Morse and Morse 1983, 17). In another case, Caleb Atwater, a lawyer and postmaster, was known for investigating his adopted home town on the frontier, Circleville, Ohio. Atwater investigated Adena and Hopewell mounds throughout the Ohio Valley, most notably in Circleville, which have since been destroyed. Atwater created detailed maps of the mounds and speculated on who constructed them, and why. Contemporary Native Americans purported not to know who built the mounds, or what happened to the people who had lived in the region before them. James's and Atwater's knowledge of their local areas and scientific backgrounds enabled them to ‘mine’ their local communities for artefacts for museum collections. In addition, especially for Atwater, his interpretation of the data spread harmful myths about the origins of the Moundbuilders and the identities of Native Americans still living in the Midwest. Although the archaeological sites have since been destroyed, James's and Atwater's knowledge of where and how to recover artefacts led to museum exhibitions in Eastern USA that inspired public interest in archaeology. They were locals working where they lived, but they differed from community archaeologists today in that the artefacts they excavated were exported to scientific institutions outside their localities. James's and Atwater's archaeological work did not directly benefit the communities in which they excavated.

Best practice: connect descendants with their heritage

Community archaeology today aims to facilitate making heritage connections between descendants of past peoples, the people living in localities excavated by archaeologists, and archaeologists. Archaeologists may involve descendants in excavation projects as labourers or informants or provide opportunities for public events, such as listening sessions or family reunions at sites.

One of the first historical archaeology projects was conducted by a descendant of the site's earlier inhabitants. In 1856, James Hall, a Boston steel engraver and civil engineer, excavated the home site of his ancestor, Miles Standish, in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Standish arrived in the New World with the Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower in 1620. He became a leader in Plymouth Colony. His home site dated to c. 1630–1710. Hall's excavation was one of the nation's first to be conducted using systematic excavation methods and documentation techniques, including gridding the site, maintaining vertical control, and creating a site map. He tried to recover artefacts in situ mapping and notetaking and recorded stratigraphic relationships within the site. Hall also catalogued the artefacts and numbered them. The excavation provided information about the adaptation of traditional Welsh and English architectural forms in the early seventeenth century to new circumstances and their subsequent abandonment (Deetz 1977, 29–30).

Archaeologists working in the American Southwest employed Native Americans as labourers and ethnographic consultants. Frank Hamilton Cushing, Jesse Walter Fewkes, Frederick Webb Hodge Fewkes and Hodge hired Hopi workmen at the Sikyatki excavation in 1895 (Kramer 2003, 120). The Hemenway Expedition hired archaeologists including Adolph Bandelier, Hodge, Cushing, as well as Zuni companions, Mexican labourers, and Pima Indian guides (Hinsley and Wilcox 2008, 38). Contemporary community archaeology holds that engaging descendants might include commitments to volunteer or provide input. History has not captured if participants in the Hemenway Expedition felt a connection with the sites being excavated, if they were descendants of the tribes who had lived in them, or their thoughts on labouring in archaeology. Although the archaeologists’ records do not discuss purposeful engagement of descendant communities as such, one must wonder what Native Americans thought about the excavations and the sites and artefacts they found.

Best practice: understand why the public does archaeology

Archaeologists work with communities to locate places significant to their identities and economies. Community archaeology can help communities to delineate borders of past places, or establish the locations of features within their area. Archaeology can also be an economic vehicle; today, that means heritage tourism and other ventures, whereas in the past it meant personal gain.

Robert Pagan, a merchant and local political figure in New Brunswick, applied rudimentary archaeological methods to determine the international border with the District of Maine. In 1797, Pagan and surveyor Thomas Wright located the 1603/1607 settlement of the Sieur de Mons’ expedition on Saint Croix Island, located near Calais, Maine, at the mouth of the Saint Croix River. Using Samuel de Champlain's diaries and map of Saint Croix as his guide, Pagan found evidence of structures and their foundations by way of rock piles, stone walls set in clay mortar, charcoal, and bricks; he also found a stoneware pitcher. Unbeknownst to Pagan and Wright, their work led to the establishment of a national park unit: Saint Croix Island National Monument was designated in 1949. The area was listed on the National Register in 1966. It is now Saint Croix Island National Historic Site.

The sale and trade of antiquities was, and still is, a powerful connection between communities and archaeological resources. Although today archaeologists decry such practices as pothunting or vandalism, in the nineteenth century individuals saw sites and artefacts as resources for personal gain that supported their local economies and communities. In 1888, ranchers Richard Wetherill and Charles Mason discovered Cliff Palace high on a canyon wall in the Mesa Verde area of southwestern Colorado. They discovered another large cliff dwelling in a nearby canyon, which they named Spruce Tree House. They excavated decorated pottery, implements of stone, bone and wood, ancient skulls, and other objects. They sold part of their finds to the Historical Society of Colorado, but kept a much larger selection (Lee 2001, Chapter 4). The scientific community's concern over the sale of artefacts and destruction of sites by the Wetherills and others in the region contributed to the establishment of Mesa Verde National Park in 1906.

Best practice: encourage public support for archaeology

One factor of community archaeology involves encouraging public support for archaeological studies. To do this, artefacts and associated documentation from excavations should remain accessible to the communities from which they were excavated.

In the nineteenth century, the USA allowed archaeologists from other nations to excavate within its borders and remove artefacts to their home countries. Frenchman Jean Léon de Cessac gathered ancient remains along the Santa Barbara Channel between 1877 and 1879. Cessac dug extensively on San Nicolas and Santa Cruz Island, then exported the artefacts to France. Among Cessac's discoveries were bird and sea mammal effigies on San Nicolas Island and his recognition that the San Nicolas materials were different from those of the northern Channel Islands. He was also the first to report on the caves and chert quarries on Santa Cruz Island (whose archaeological sites were listed on the National Register in 1986) and to identify traces of Kodiak peoples’ occupation on San Nicolas. Cessac furthermore elicited detailed information from local Native Americans about the production and use of the collected artefacts (De Cessac 1951; Moratto 1984, 123). Paul Schumacher, a US archaeologist who saw Cessac as professional competition, appealed to the Smithsonian and Congress to enact a law prohibiting the export of antiquities.

In 1891, Gustaf Nordenskiöld, a Swede, began to work with the Wetherills at Mesa Verde. His 1893 report alerted US citizens to the degree to which antiquities were being taken from the country. Jesse L. Nusbaum tried in the mid-twentieth century to convince Finland to return the collection. He was unsuccessful, and it is still retained by the National Museum in Helsinki (Lee 2001, Chapter 4). American archaeologists resented Nordenskjöld's actions, but the event also provided strong arguments in Congress for law to protect archeological resources. The loss of archaeological material before Federal protections to archaeological sites disabled communities from learning about the pasts and sharing it with other audiences.

Best practice: civic engagement

Archaeology in the late nineteenth century inspired people who wanted greater protection for archaeological sites and artefacts to organize into advocacy groups and pressure the Federal government to protect archaeological places. Such ‘civic engagement’ sought Federal intervention to ensure that archaeological resources would benefit communities for generations to come. Civic engagement continues to be a connective force between communities and archaeology conducted by the NPS. Director's Order 75A: Civic Engagement and Public Involvement (2007) defines civic engagement as ‘a continuous, dynamic conversation with the public on many levels that reinforces that commitment of both NPS and the public to the preservation of heritage resources, both cultural and natural, and strengthens public understanding of the full meaning and contemporary relevance of these resources’. This policy makes civic engagement a priority for NPS, and authorizes its archaeologists to encourage communities to get involved in the Federal process.

Archaeologists, archaeology supporters, and communities believed that Federal authority should include permanent protection of scenic and scientific resources on public lands. Influential private citizens who organized themselves to promote preservation and conservation reacted to looting of sites and directed the responses of the Federal government to the issue. In 1899, committees from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Archaeological Institute of America combined efforts to promote a bill for the permanent preservation of antiquities on Federal lands. Members of these organizations hailed from across the USA, but comprised a community of professional scientists and advocates who had literally and figuratively invested in archaeological exploration and the preservation of resources. In 1900, several bills were introduced in the House of Representatives that attempted to place ruins, monuments, and collections under the protection of the Secretary of the Interior. These bills also proposed to permit excavations for educational or scientific purposes, prohibit destruction or injury or removal of archeological resources, and allow the President and Secretary of the Interior to establish preserves and parks. A series of bills were introduced to Congress to set aside areas to be permanently protected for the public benefit, usually as national parks (Lee 2001, Chapter 5). The bills supported the preservation of archaeological resources for scientific study and the public's benefit, rather than individual gain as seen in communities for whom archaeology helped to sustain their economies.

Early in 1906, Representative John Fletcher Lacey introduced a bill originally written by archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett, who presented it to the American Anthropological Association and the Archaeological Institute of America to gain support. It was called ‘A Bill for the Preservation of American Antiquities’. The bill protected archeological sites on Federal lands. It furthermore authorized the President to set aside ‘historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest’. On 8 June 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act into law (Lee 2001, Chapter 6).

At about the same time, separately from the development of the Antiquities Act, a group of women organized the Colorado Cliff-Dwellings Association. They launched a vigorous and effective campaign to establish Mesa Verde as a national park. As early as 1900 they succeeded in leasing land where cliff-dwellings were situated for $300 a year from the Ute Indians. Within a few years the General Land Office withdrew an extensive part of the Mesa Verde area from sale, entry, settlement or disposal pending a determination of the advisability of establishing the area as a national park (Lee 2001, Chapter 5). The first bill to create a Colorado Cliff Dwellings National Park was introduced in 1901, but no progress was made until 1905 when H.R.5998 created the Mesa Verde National Park. Edgar Lee Hewett accompanied surveyors from the Bureau of American Ethnology to identify the ruins to be included within the Southern Ute Indian Reservation, resulting in the inclusion of all the Mesa Verde and the Mancos Canyon ruins. Support for Mesa Verde National Park came from all over the country, from public and political sources alike. President Roosevelt signed the bill creating Mesa Verde National Park, 22 days after he approved the Antiquities Act, but not using its authority (Lee 2001, Chapter 7). After Mesa Verde National Park was established, Jesse Walter Fewkes was assigned to open the ruins for the public. He excavated many of the major dwellings, including Cliff Palace, Spruce Tree House, Square Tower House, Oak Tree House, and at the mesa top. Fewkes also set precedents in exhibiting prehistoric sites to the public (Rohn 1973, 190).

By the end of the nineteenth century, communities of advocates for archaeological sites organized for political action. Mary Hemenway, who had funded the Hemenway Southwestern Archaeological Expedition, took umbrage at the extensive vandalism reported by archaeologists at Casa Grande in Arizona, which was set aside as a Federal reserve in 1892. She campaigned for Federal protection of the ruins. In another case, the Colorado Federation of Women's Clubs became advocates for Mesa Verde. The Wetherills’ excavations set off disputes between local pothunters who sought items for individual gain and academically trained scientists and community advocates for archaeology. The Federation's concern over the Wetherills’ vandalism and pothunting led to Congressional approval of Mesa Verde National Park in 1906. The park became part of the National Park System in 1916 and a World Heritage Site in 1978. Community activism also led to the preservation of other kinds of archaeological places. In 1863, soldiers found for a key railway center and gateway to the Confederacy at Chattanooga and Chickamauga in Tennessee during the Civil War. Veterans from the Union and Confederacy worked together decades later to preserve the battlefields and protect them from vandalism. Their political advocacy as a veterans’ community led Congress to pass legislation to authorize Chickamauga and Chattanooga as America's first national military park in 1890.

Conclusion

Over the course of NPS history, communities — be they cultural, professional, geographical — have played significant roles in archaeology. In fact, it might be argued that the National Park Service might not exist without public advocacy for, and communities’ engagement with, archaeological resources. Activities that took place across the United States during the prehistory of modern archaeology and the National Park Service contribute to our understanding of the ways archaeology matters to all kinds of people.

Notes on contributor

Teresa S. Moyer is an archaeologist with the National Park Service.

Correspondence to: Teresa S. Moyer, National Park Service, Archeology Program, 1201 Eye Street NW (2275), Washington, DC, 20005, USA. Email: [email protected]

Acknowledgements

Thanks to David Gadsby for reviewing earlier versions of this article.