Barbara Wyatt: Our last speaker is Mike Russo.
Mike's regular job is the division lead of the external programs at SEAC, the Southeast
Archeological Center, but we're absolutely delighted to have him in Washington serving
as the Erica Siebert stand-in, he is our National Register NHL archeologist and he has done
that for couple months now, I guess, and will be there maybe another month.
He's added significantly to our knowledge while he�s been with us in Washington.
He's got a PhD in Archeology from the University of Florida.
He also worked in the State of Louisiana as a regional archeologist, but he has been with
NPS now for twenty years.
Mike, thank you so much.
Mike Russo: Thanks.
As Barbara mentioned, I'm the acting archeologist.
It seems that the National Register program runs out of archeologists frequently and they
bring so many in.
There is a, I would say, chronic under representation of archeology in the National Register, not
for any lack of time, but from just the way it's been set up.
It's traditionally been dominated by historians and I think the ratio now is like 13 to 1,
and that one guy is acting only.
My expertise on these topics we've talked about, they are all policy topics, and what
the National Register represents in terms of landscape guidance.
When I first got there they asked me, Barbara asked me to discuss if I would, the archeological
aspects of landscape guidance and how our guidance guides people and is a good or bad,
with the high and low spots of it.
So, that's what I have done.
I've reviewed all the bulletins and you are all familiar with the bulletins.
And all the bulletins I reviewed they're all out in the docket outside there, and please
make yourself available to those.
And I have concluded this, there are virtually no National Register guidelines specific to
maritime cultural landscapes and certainly none specific to archeological MCLs.
Given policy earlier suggestion that the Register by law and design recognize only five property
types, and that the landscape is not considered a property type.
It probably becomes no surprise then that the limited Register guidance on specific
types of landscapes in fact maybe understandable.
That is, there is also no Register specific guidance on how to nominate the 19th century
road or a 20th century subway track or turpentine camp or roller coaster or human versus animal
migration trail, although all of these have been listed or eligible for listing on the
National Register.
This is because the National Register guidance is purposely general in character to accommodate
virtually any historically significant place in America.
Let's see if this works.
Okay.
That being said, there are places so unusual, so different from properties first envisioned
by the National Register program that those places have been engendered separate guideline
specific to those resource types such as mines, ships, navigational aids, and battle fields,
and of course landscapes represent another.
There are in fact two specific National Register guidelines on landscapes.
The first being the National Bulletin 18 published in 1981, some fifteen years after the establishment
of the Register itself, and it dealt with designed urban landscapes whose contributing
elements were primarily � included buildings and structures, but also open design lands
such as parks and gardens.
And the bulletin still serves well the nomination of historic urban landscape features to the
Register, but the word archeology, and I'm talking here about archeological landscapes,
is mentioned only twice in the fourteen-page document.
And those mentions are not discussed at all how to integrate archeological resources into
nominations for standing historic properties usually nominated under criterion C for period
masterwork or artistic distinction.
In 1990, Bulletin 30, on rural historic landscapes was released to provide guidance in nominating
all other non-urban landscapes including, as examples, a couple maritime landscape themes,
fishing and shipping, distinguishing urban from rural landscapes primarily by the differences
in the ratio of the built environment that consisted of building and structures such
as ranches, fences and roads, from the natural environment consisting of landforms and vegetation
cover, including forest, brush and modified lands such as farm fields.
As long as people had worked in, manipulated or otherwise affected the natural environment
or features in some historically significant way, rural landscapes were seen as potentially
eligible for the Register.
Under Bulletin 30, natural features could not be seen as part of the rural landscape
unless they had "reflected the day to day occupational activities of people engaged
in traditional work, who have developed and involved to the natural features in response
to both forces of natures and the pragmatic need to make a living."
That is the historic significance of a rural historic landscape in the view of NR under
Bulletin 30 was that it reflects people's adaptations to the national environment and
archeological parlance, a predominantly perceptual view for archeology.
For archeology, Bulletin 30 was far more substantial than Bulletin 18 had been.
It mentioned archeological sites nineteen times stressing their potential landscape
features akin to building and structures when observable and such things as relic house
foundations, stone fences or dirt roads.
Calling such an approach a landscape archeological approach; however.
Buried observable archeological deposits were not identified in any of the many examples
as holding the potential between the constitute a landscape in their own right without the
presence of man-made vegetation or natural features above the ground surface meeting
criterion C requirements, aesthetic or emblematic work of a period or masterwork builder.
That is no clear definition as to what may or may not constitute a criterion D archeological
landscape or its features as presented.
In fact, the term archeological landscape was never used in NR 30 or in any other National
Register guidance.
Why we ask?
One part of the answer may be found in Bulletin 36.
I think that's Bulletin 36, yes.
Guideline for evaluating Register ing archeological properties.
It states that under criterion A, B, and C, the National Register must place a heavy emphasis
on the property looking like it did during the period of significance.
That is landscapes from the typical NR perspectives are typically viewable entities preserved
in time.
And I think our early discussion on showing what a landscape looks like kind of reinforces
that idea.
Few, if any, are constitute solely of unobservable stains or artifacts buried underground that
need technical interpretations to recon their historical significance, let alone determine
what landscape they used to be on.
Thousands of archeological sites are listed under criterion D strictly for their informational
potential but when the aesthetic and visual aspects expected of a landscape meet this
hidden resources, landscape discussions disappear.
Like previous Bulletin 36 presented no clean definition of or guidelines for dealing with
strictly archeological landscapes, the lack above ground features, but the bulletin did
present one example of an archeological landscape with no apparent above ground presence of
its archeology.
But again, it just seems in this case, surface agitation reflected the historic period of
interest provided and provided the aesthetic requirement under criterion C and that's why
it is nominated as a landscape.
The major goal of archeology according to Bulletin 36 was to understand the effects
of environmental change and population pressure, and the impact of human action on landscape.
A concept directly linked to Building 30's concept of rural historic landscapes.
In Bulletin 21, there's also some information although the title would suggest that it�s
got probably more information on landscapes than all but the rural historical � archeological
landscapes � and all about the rural historic bulletin, and I'd recommend reading that if
you want to get some interesting ideas on how to bound archeological landscapes.
But in this, no definition of landscapes is presented either.
It does offer examples of landscapes as bounded sites and districts, some of which contain
archeological deposits.
Again, however, all landscapes with archeological features are considered landscapes only under
criterion C that is for the standing structures and their visible natural features like Bulletin
20, sees archeology primarily as handmade historic structures and in terms of landscapes,
archeology is not mentioned without them or without aesthetic natural features present.
In the section concerning the boundaries of Register properties in general,
six out of seventeen are described as landscapes or as containing landscapes features including
archeological sites with no surface expressions or whatsoever.
But when the reader turns to the section titled Boundaries for Archeological Sites and Districts,
wherein criterion D is the primary criterion of significance, none of the sites or districts
are viewed as landscapes or landscape features, despite the fact that both environmental and
cultural data could constitute a rural historic landscape are present, but buried and hidden.
In one example, archeological components are explicitly excluded from landscape features,
feature recognition, while at the same time natural features are identified as landscape
components.
I suspect they are hidden.
If we take a look at the dictionary's definition of landscapes, the visual aspect is of course
critical, but given the Register's description, overall landscape is a sealed archeological
landscape is a real possibility despite the fact that none are identified in guidance
documents.
In the end, I suspect that the fact that no buried archeological sites or districts have
ever been identified as landscapes in the NR owes as much to the fact that the Register
simply does not track landscapes as a property guide as much as it has to do with the individual
tendencies for us to think of landscapes only when surface and observable cultural and natural
features are present.
This brings me to finally to the question of is how to nominate archeological maritime
landscapes if all contributing elements are buried underground or in deep or murky waters
according to NR criteria.
Do landscapes need a visible structure or building in order to list it?
Or can completely buried archeological sites with no surface expression
as landscape features constitute a landscape in and of themselves.
Technically, no register guidance requires observability as a criterion for contributing
to a landscape district, but in practice, no district exist has been identified has
a landscape that lacks visible features.
This leaves open a question of purely buried archeological landscapes under the Register
though most archeologist could easily identify cultural landscapes through other approaches
and do to other approaches including catchments, settlement, nearest neighbor, are they spatially
oriented analysis involving archeological and environmental data.
As for observable shipwrecks, Bulletin 20 Nominating Historic Vessels and Shipwrecks
to the National Register, provides a good overview of the unique problems inherited
in locating and describing shipwrecks for the Register, although it doesn't specifically
talk about landscapes.
For Register review purposes, wrecks and wreck elements are always seen as archeological
sites even though on a comparative level is hypothesized that the best preserved among
them might easily be classified as structures under criterion C. On the surface recognizing
some wrecks and structures other than archeological sites would solve many problems concerning
buried archeological landscapes or at least underwater landscapes that have observable
features but lots of buried archeological features also.
But if the Register would do so to recognize this as structures rather than as archeological
sites, other problems would arise.
For one higher degree of integrity is required for structures than for archeological sites.
Nonetheless and despite some of the NR guidance to the contrary, isolated shipwrecks have
been listed under criterion D for the information potential as well as a criterion C for aesthetic
or masterwork aspects.
Why?
As the bulletin notes, the application of National Registry criteria to shipwrecks has
not been well defined or understood.
I think clarifying when and how shipwrecks should be classified as structures and not
archeological sites would be critical to any attempt as involving them as contributing
elements in maritime landscapes districts.
In the end, the largest issue for the Register involving submerged landscapes will not be
shipwrecks or drowned former terrestrial sites themselves; however, but rather how we connect
them to the land.
Under the NR, the current NR regulations, both the land and the culture resources constitute
the landscape, but under rural historic landscapes criteria, perhaps the closest we have under
which we could nominate a maritime cultural landscape, people or cultures are required
to have worked or shaped or modified the land in order for it to be considered part of an
historic landscape.
I think John Jensen brought up this problem earlier on how to define boundaries.
In the case of shipwrecks with few exceptions; however, most historic and prehistoric sailors
or passengers did not work the ocean bottom.
The working life of the vessel was typically restricted with times of floating entity not
its brief tenure of sinking or sunk one.
What land, if any, becomes part of that natural landscape aspect of a shipwreck landscape?
That is, the guidance suggested oceans, lakes, or river bottoms are not part of the archeological
sites unless physical remains of the ships or its wrecking event can be found.
If this idea is extended to shipwreck landscapes, this could be problematic.
How do we get the greater natural features involved into finding shipwrecks and drown
site cultural landscapes?
I think that is a question that I'm looking for this symposium to answer.
Thank you.