Creation of “America's Best Idea”

Federal involvement in the production and preservation of national history began with the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872. The Antiquities Act of 1906 gave the president the authority to proclaim and reserve “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest” as national monuments (54 U.S.C. § 320301–320303). In the early twentieth century, national parks and national monuments were overseen by the Department of the Interior but were managed by many disparate and unrelated agencies. To provide cohesive management of historic properties, the National Park Service (NPS) was established in 1916. Declared America's “best idea” by historian and author Wallace Stegner, the NPS has the mission of preserving the “natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations” (National Park Service 2020). Whereas the Antiquities Act authorized the president—a single individual—to proclaim which places were significant for our nation's history, NPS, as an agency, needed to develop its own system of making those decisions.

As the NPS expanded and increased its holdings, the need developed to evaluate how well NPS units represented our nation's history. Beginning in the mid-1930s, the NPS initiated the Historic Sites Survey to inventory its holdings (Mackintosh Reference Mackintosh1985) to “ensure that the full diversity of American history and prehistory was expressed” (Page Reference Page2009:5–12). To aid in these efforts, Verne Chatelain introduced a “thematic framework” consisting of 23 historical themes and 12 archaeological culture groups (Advisory Board on National Parks, Historic Sites, Buildings, and Monuments 1937). This nested system was the first nationally codified list of historic themes, subthemes, and facets and was designed to reflect the most important nationally significant historical topics. In this framework, “history” begins with Euroamerican arrival, and archaeology is treated as largely ahistorical, operating entirely outside historic themes and defined only by geographic regions.

In retrospect, it is easy to see that NPS's desire of having history fully represented through its holdings was a much more difficult task than was expected. Assigning NPS units to the predetermined historic themes required historical or archaeological research that had not yet been carried out. Faced with funding constraints, NPS staff also were required to prioritize the review of congressionally proposed projects, resulting in delays to the needed research (Sprinkle Reference Sprinkle2010:271). It also became clear that some themes were overrepresented by existing NPS units, whereas many were not represented at all. No NPS units were identified as representative of the theme “Cultural Developments: Indigenous American Populations,” whereas 32 NPS units were deemed representative of “European Colonial Exploration and Settlement.” Part of this disparity was due to the organization of the thematic framework, which was vague and overly compartmentalized in its original conception. Despite these difficulties in representation, the NPS labored for decades to operationalize this framework in its historic preservation efforts.

The NHPA and Memorializing History beyond NPS Boundaries

The scope of national historic preservation efforts was fundamentally restructured with the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. This act initiated a system for reviewing federal projects that serves as the backbone of today's cultural resource management industry. Building on the Antiquities Act of 1906, the NHPA created the National Register of Historic Places, a comprehensive list of historic places deemed worthy of preservation. Although it was managed by the NPS, properties did not have to be NPS units to be listed. This marked a critical shift in the production of national histories. Before passage of the NHPA, the NPS and its management of its holdings provided the only system to memorialize, protect, and interpret places of historic significance. By removing NPS ownership as a requirement, the NHPA democratized the process of defining and recognizing significance by expanding federal recognition of historic sites beyond NPS boundaries to include historic properties exhibiting local and state significance.

This process has been routinized in the now-familiar Section 106 process, which requires federal agencies to identify historic properties, evaluate their eligibility for listing in the National Register, and consider how adverse effects of federal undertakings can be resolved. Determining eligibility for inclusion on the National Register is thus critically important in cultural resource management today. Although often implicit in the Section 106 process, historic context serves as the underappreciated foundation for assessing National Register eligibility. To determine whether a given property is historically significant, it must be understood through the lens of one or more specific historic contexts, the frameworks that guide all interpretation and evaluation.

As stated earlier, the 1936 thematic framework equated archaeological themes with geographic culture areas, rather than true historic contexts organized by theme, place, and time. It reflected a time of “broad consensus” in academic communities and the public (Sprinkle Reference Sprinkle2010:275), during which history was overwhelmingly driven by “nationalism, exceptionalism, and triumphalism” (Launius Reference Launius2010:75; see also Trigger Reference Trigger1989). Historic contexts were reserved for communicating Euroamerican material histories, not Indigenous material histories. Revisions to the thematic framework in 1970 and 1987 expanded the number of themes and added more chronological detail, but it was still overwhelming based on “stages of American progress” focusing on the achievements of military and political figures (Advisory Board on National Parks, Historic Sites, Buildings, and Monuments 1936). Although these revisions were a step in the right direction, they ultimately did not address concerns that began pouring into archaeological discourse.

Implementation and Critiques

Implementing the NHPA resulted in lively discussions as scholars rushed to figure out how to translate this new legislative framework into archaeological praxis. Many quickly recognized the opportunity that NHPA provided (LeBlanc Reference LeBlanc1983), but it also quickly became apparent that the system was not a perfect fit with archaeological data (Barnes et al. Reference Barnes, Briggs and Neilsen1980; Klinger and Raab Reference Klinger and Raab1980; McManamom Reference McManamom1990; Raab and Klinger Reference Raab and Klinger1979; Sharrock and Grayson Reference Sharrock and Grayson1979).

Scholars lamented the difficulty of reconciling the rigidity of the National Register and its accompanying criteria with the uncertainties of archaeological data. Archaeologists have long recognized that the National Register was built to primarily recognize history manifest in architectural space (i.e., old buildings), with a reliance on documentary history, and that the requisite criteria are often incompatible with archaeological data. This has resulted in a programmatic overreliance on Criterion D, which states that a property need only to exhibit potential to yield scientific data to be considered eligible. And viewed through the lens of the National Register, eligible properties are treated in the same way as listed properties. The conceptualization of archaeological sites as scientific data occurred at a time when archaeologists were working to build their scientific credibility, seeking to differentiate themselves from antiquarians and grave robbers to ward off pressures from land developers (Smith Reference Smith1994:302). But this “play-it-safe” approach has resulted in the routine flooding of reports with redundant site types deemed eligible solely on the fact that they might be important for future research (Peeples et al. Reference Peeples, Clark, Doelle, Laurenzi and Mills2016:5). Scholars are calling for more synthetic research that uses archaeological data to produce historical narratives (Altschul Reference Altschul2016; Kintigh et al. Reference Kintigh, Altschul, Beaudry, Drennan, Kinzig, Kohler and Limp2014).

An overreliance on the scientific value of archaeological sites, with a concomitant downplaying of their cultural, historical, or social value, also disproportionately silences Native American pasts (Lipe Reference Lipe, Sebastian and Lipe2009). Under this system, ancestral Native American sites are often commodified and set aside “for the enjoyment of visitors and for scientific study” (Hawkins Reference Hawkins, Banks and Scott2016:82–83) but are otherwise treated as ahistorical, robbed of their capacity to produce histories worthy of protection. In a cogent reflection on the role of Native American involvement in NHPA-driven archaeology, Hawkins (Reference Hawkins, Banks and Scott2016:80) notes that early implementation did not consider “how exceedingly divergent from mainstream preservationist or archaeological perspectives that Indian perspectives might be . . . or that those perspectives should matter.”

More sustained collaboration with Native American communities demonstrates that many of the requirements of National Register eligibility are misaligned with core Native values (Pasqual Reference Pasqual, Mills and Fowles2017). For example, the National Register is predominantly designed for the built environment and is based on a philosophical view that it is separate from the natural environment. As such, it is generally ill equipped for incorporating natural landscape features like mountains, rivers, and viewsheds, which Native communities often consider just as historically and culturally significant as structural features. Although traditional cultural properties were recognized as historic properties in the 1992 amendment of the NHPA (54 U.S.C. § 302706[a]), they offer only a limited solution. One of the problems is that the National Register recognizes only five property types—district, building, site, structure, and object—so traditional cultural properties still must be defined in relation to a recognized property type to be eligible for listing. Traditional cultural properties have not been fully embraced, and their use in the National Register is uncommon (King Reference King2009) and has generally been met with suspicion: “Because, after all, how could Indians be trusted to not willy-nilly designate every place a traditional cultural property” (Hawkins Reference Hawkins, Banks and Scott2016:81).

These critiques align with major changes in the theoretical landscape in the United States, where archaeologists have rejected revisionist histories and called for more disciplinary reflexivity to recognize the inherent social and political nuances of the discipline. The postprocessual critique was mirrored by similar critiques in the preservation community, referred to as the “new preservation” of the mid-1990s (Foner Reference Foner1991; Nash et al. Reference Nash, Crabtree and Dunn1997; Thomas Reference Thomas1991), which criticized heritage management strategies for remaining largely apolitical. Scholars called for the involvement of diverse stakeholders in determining significance (Leone and Potter Reference Leone and Potter1992) and in producing archaeological narratives (Atalay Reference Atalay, Habu, Fawcett and Matsunaga2008). Some scholars argue that more explicit recognition of “competing heritage values” is needed beyond those codified in the NHPA, which would result in an intersection of social and political values that is a “highly political . . . struggle that uses cultural sites and places as symbols in the politics of community, cultural, social, and historical identity” (Smith Reference Smith1994:302). Although cultural resource management “is the form of archaeological practice which most directly engages with politics” (Smith Reference Smith1994:300), it has also clung dearly to its claim to scientific authority over cultural or social values (Mason Reference Mason2006). These issues were well represented in the operative thematic framework of the time, and it was clear that revisions were desperately needed to address these critiques.

Revisions to the Thematic Framework and Their Implications: The Democratization of Significance

Recognizing these insufficiencies, Congress, through Section 1209 of Public Law 101-628 that passed in 1991, instructed the NPS to dramatically restructure the thematic framework (National Park Service 1994). In a “significant departure” from previous frameworks, the NPS unveiled a “less compartmentalized approach” to history that “emphasizes the process of how to study history but does not identify what to study” (Figure 1). Instead of focusing on discrete events, the system was organized into 8 themes, 43 subthemes, and 281 facets that are topical in nature, emphasizing topics that can be explored in many times and places.

Figure 1.

Revised thematic framework, adapted from “NHL Thematic Framework” (National Park Service 1994).

Unlike the original 1936 thematic framework, which treated historic contexts as boxes to check when they were exemplified by NPS units, the revised framework is presented as a loosely structured conceptual starting point to be supplemented and enriched by interdisciplinary dialogue and research. The revised themes are not intended to be mutually exclusive, comprehensive, or final but should reflect the diversity and multivalency of historic places. In fact, recognizing that the pace of change in scholarly discourse requires flexibility in accompanying NPS guidance, the revised framework invites evaluation and interpretation of historic sites through “analysis based on the best of current scholarship” (National Park Service 1994). The framework was also created to inform preservation and interpretation efforts at local, state, and regional scales, another significant departure from the original system, which was only concerned with nationally significant historic properties owned and managed by the NPS.

In 1997, the revised framework was published in its entirety in the Society for American Archaeology Bulletin, and its importance for archaeologists was outlined in an article in the Journal of Historical Archaeology (Little Reference Little1997). The combined implications of these revisions, however, have yet to be fully realized by the archaeological community.

The 1994 revisions also mark a critical shift in responsibility that enables the production of more representative histories (Little Reference Little1997; National Park Service 1997). Under the revised framework, individuals and agencies outside the NPS are encouraged to develop and use their own historic contexts in the evaluation and interpretation of historic properties. This revised framework recognizes that history is not a static record but is actively produced and reproduced. Archaeologists can and should have a more explicit role in this process. Although under the NHPA we are still required to evaluate properties using the familiar National Register criteria, the flexibility of historic contexts can be used to help produce more nuanced applications of these criteria. Again, the historic context is the temporal, cultural, historical, and conceptual framework through which significance and integrity are evaluated. This shift in responsibility provides a unique opportunity to create the terms by which properties are evaluated.

Who Produces Historic Contexts?

Although the utility of historic contexts has largely flown under the radar, some archaeologists have picked up on its importance. Beginning in the late 1990s, a small number of State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPOs), such as those in Arizona and New Mexico, began sponsoring the production of thematic historic contexts. The Arizona SHPO, for example, produced intensively researched historic context studies covering topics like the study of historic trails (Stein Reference Stein1994) and lithic scatter sites (Slaughter et al. Reference Slaughter, Fratt, Anderson and Ahlstrom1992). Although they have been largely ignored by the academic community (Altschul Reference Altschul2016:73) and are now outdated, these studies provided an indispensable resource for evaluating sites as part of a broader research program in historic preservation activities.

Today, historic context studies are actively solicited by State Historic Preservation Offices, produced as part of management plans, and increasingly are part of nominations to the National Register. Some independent agencies produce historic context studies in partnership with federal and state agencies. Colorado State University's Public Lands History Center, for example, partners with land management agencies to produce historic context studies to support diverse heritage management programs, including National Register nominations and amendments (e.g., Andrade Reference Andrade2012). Sometimes, historic contexts are developed on a more case-by-case basis, like the four historic contexts developed for the University of Minnesota Morris (UMM) Preservation Plan to provide the university with “planning tools to make informed choices about managing the physical environment in ways that would strengthen and preserve UMM's diverse physical and cultural assets” (University of Minnesota Morris 2005:3).

Guidance on producing historic contexts is explicitly outlined in an NPS bulletin on the preparation of Multiple Property Documentation Forms (MPDFs; National Park Service 1991). Historic contexts are a core component of the MPDF, providing the frameworks needed to interpret multiple, physically disparate properties. The MPDF Portage Trails in Minnesota 1630–1870s, for example, uses two historic contexts (Vogel and Stanley Reference Vogel and Stanley1991). One recognizes the contact period from the 1630s to 1837, which is associated with Eastern Dakota, Ojibwe, French, British, and US trade. The second focuses on the postcontact period from 1837 to the 1930s and is associated with Native American communities and reservations.

Although some scholars treat historic contexts as only applicable for understanding multiple properties (Scarpino Reference Scarpino2010:24), in its original use the concept was intended to “pertain to all nominations and property types” (Wyatt Reference Wyatt2009:1). Producing historic contexts as part of individual National Register nominations, although less common, provides an underappreciated mechanism to produce more representative and multivocal histories. In the remainder of this article, we demonstrate the utility of this mechanism with a recent example from El Morro National Monument in New Mexico.

Multivocal Preparation of a District Nomination

Recognizing this complexity, the project was quickly modified to include the preparation of a district nomination. The revised project benefited greatly from working closely with representatives from the Pueblo of Acoma and the Pueblo of Zuni, whose cultural affiliation was determined by the NPS based on an extensive study conducted by the Museum of Northern Arizona (Hays-Gilpin Reference Hays-Gilpin2012; Hutt Reference Hutt2014). Consultation meetings and site visits helped us recognize new site types and modify the district boundaries to include them (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Tribal consultation meeting to review IRAD draft nomination on August 3, 2018 (photograph by T. J. Ferguson). (Color online)

The newly delineated Inscription Rock Archaeological District (IRAD) documents 44 properties, including six pueblos and eight small structures, most of which are located on the top of Inscription Rock, as well as three rockshelters in Box Canyon, six hand-and-toe-hold trails carved into the sandstone cliffs providing access to the top of Inscription Rock, three water resource sites, and 24 petroglyph, pictograph, and inscription sites along the base of Inscription Rock (Hanson et al. Reference Hanson, Poulin and Ferguson2020).

Site visits with Acoma and Zuni tribal members also helped us identify property types that would not have been considered through archaeological survey alone. Tinajas, for example, are natural water catchment basins formed in bedrock that collect rainwater, and these occur in considerable numbers on the top of Inscription Rock (Figure 4). Called heloshokta in Zuni and guwaishak'atsi in Acoma, tinajas are deeply significant because they are homes of certain deities and are referred to as “life-holders.” They serve to protect the community spiritually and to provide strength to passersby, especially those on pilgrimages. It is customary to drink from tinajas and to leave offerings. Frequent scatters of pottery sherds in and around tinajas are interpreted by Pueblo tribal members as a testament to the longevity of this important relationship. Although representatives from both tribes offered slightly different perspectives, everyone agreed that tinajas were culturally significant features that warranted the same protection as other routinely recorded archaeological sites.

Figure 4.

Octavius Seowtewa and Presley Haskie from Zuni Pueblo discuss the cultural significance of tinajas with Kelsey E. Hanson, Steve Baumann, and Rick Green during the tribal review meeting (photograph by T. J. Ferguson). (Color online)

Recognizing Multivocality through Multiple Historic Contexts

Evaluating how these diverse property types are considered significant among different stakeholders required the production of multiple historic contexts. Although the original National Register listing for El Morro focused exclusively on the significance of the early Spanish and Anglo-American inscriptions in Euroamerican colonial histories, it was clear that the multiplicity and complexity of the IRAD properties required additional cultural, temporal, and topical frameworks. Combining archaeological, ethnographic, and archival data, we developed three distinct yet complementary historic contexts to capture more fully the diverse ways in which these places are significant in terms of both scientific significance and ongoing social and cultural importance. Note that although some historic contexts may emphasize certain data types over others (i.e., archaeological, ethnographic, documentary), they all require the convergence of many lines of evidence. Further, most IRAD properties communicate multiple historic contexts. This demonstrates not only the utility but also the necessity of a layered approach to historic contexts.

Layers of Significance

Although the original National Register listing only recognized Spanish and Anglo-American relationships to Inscription Rock, we demonstrate the value of revising existing National Register listings to offer more accurate representation of stakeholders. Several consultation meetings and site visits helped capture multivocal relationships to Inscription Rock among members of descendant communities who were initially omitted from consideration. By developing multiple historic contexts, the National Register listing now captures the diversity of Indigenous, Spanish, and Euroamerican relationships to this place through time.