Invisibility Cloaks Do Not Protect

Aerial view from above the U.S. Capitol, looking west along the National Mall, Washington, D.C. [Between 1980 and 2006] by Highsmith, Carol M, photographer. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/2011635416/, January 30, 2025.

By Marcy Rockman, Lifting Rocks Climate and Heritage Consulting, for the SHA Climate Heritage Initiative

Last week’s White House-led freeze on US federal funding has been halted – for now. Its stated targets were “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies” (featured link below). It feels important to point out here – programs for cultural resources, heritage, and archaeology were on the list for review.

Rapid reporting by Heatmap News (featured link) on climate and energy impacts of the freeze shared a list of targeted programs from the Office of Management and Budget. At the Dept. of Interior, these included Historic Preservation Fund Grants-In-Aid, the Historic Preservation Tax Incentive, Save America’s Treasures, and apparently the Cultural Resources Program of the National Park Service and work in compliance with the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act. Other listed programs included Cultural Antiquities Task Force at the State Dept. and cultural resources monitoring by Dept. of Energy.

With respect to management of cultural heritage, the US is distinct from most other countries in not having a named heritage ministry. Rather, the National Park Service, most widely associated with large parks known for their scenery, is assigned as the lead for cultural resources and direct management is distributed across agencies that hold land and property (source). Over recent years, some colleagues have defended this structure to me, arguing that such “hiding” of cultural resources protects them from cuts. The programs on the targeted list should be our evidence that it does not.

Across the Arctic, archaeologists are raising the alarm that the long-standing practice of leaving sites in situ is not protecting them from damage from melting permafrost, that new methods of management and care are needed. This is now a powerful metaphor for US federal structures for cultural resources – as these new forces of erosion emerge, how do we want to address them?

Featured Link: https://heatmap.news/politics/trump-memo-climate-programs

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy, position, or opinions of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

For a listing of all blog posts in this series, visit our Climate Heritage Initiative page.