What is Cultural Resource Management?

Cultural Resource Management (CRM) is the practice of identifying, assessing, and stewarding places and objects that carry the weight of cultural memory. From ancient earthworks to modest storefronts layered in generational significance, CRM ensures that progress does not arrive by erasure.

It is less an industry of excavation than one of interpretation and responsibility. CRM works at the intersection of development, law, and legacy, helping institutions, agencies, and communities navigate a simple but profound question: as we build forward, what deserves to be carried with us?

CRM is not confined to archaeological digs. It includes archival research, architectural surveys, community consultation, and public education. It is a scaffold of practices, some technical, some narrative, that together help us ask not just what a site is, but what it means.

Origins: Born of Acceleration and Reckoning

The modern field of CRM emerged in the twentieth century, not from academic ambition but from necessity. As highways, dams, and housing boomed, so too did the realization that cultural landscapes were vanishing under the guise of development.

In response, policies like the United States’ National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 institutionalized the idea that history deserved a seat at the planning table. CRM was formed as a bridge between regulation and reverence, a practice rooted in preservation but animated by context and care.

Why CRM Matters Now

The demand for CRM has never been greater. Development has not slowed, but neither has our understanding of what constitutes heritage. Today’s CRM practitioners work not just to preserve artifacts, but to safeguard the interwoven identities, languages, and lived histories those artifacts represent.

It is more sustainability than nostolgia. CRM ensures that communities can thrive without displacing their own narratives, and that decision makers account for cultural value with as much rigor as economic feasibility.

What Cultural Resources Does CRM Preserve?

CRM engages with a range of cultural resources, each requiring its own mode of listening, analysis, and protection.

Archaeological sites: subsurface settlements, ceremonial grounds, trade routes, and refuse heaps. Each is a footprint of memory, preserved in soil and stone.
Historic buildings and structures: from vernacular homes to civic landmarks, these built environments carry more than architecture. They bear witness to shifting norms, migrations, and resistance.
Cultural landscapes: think, gardens, trail networks, agricultural fields, and ancestral lands. These spaces record the dialogue between people and place over time.
Artifacts and material culture: such as pottery shards, hand tools, beadwork, and textiles. Each object is an embodied story, offering insight not just into what people used but how they understood the world.
Intangible heritage: such as songs, dialects, kinship protocols, seasonal rituals. These are the living expressions of culture, passed through breath and practice rather than brick or parchment.
Archives and records: ledgers, maps, oral transcripts, photographs. These textual repositories allow us to trace decisions, locate absences, and reconstruct whole lifeways.
Sacred and ceremonial spaces: like burial grounds, pilgrimage routes, visioning sites, consecrated architecture. These places are not passive remnants. They are active sites of meaning and belonging.