Session 2: New Approaches in UCH Management in the US

Session 2: New Approaches in UCH Management in the US

Video interview with Session 2 chair Dr. Hans Van Tilburg and links to the papers included in the session.

In 2009, responding to the effort to protect the significant natural and cultural resources within the marine environment for the benefit of present and future generations, the U.S. National Marine Protected Areas Center formed a Cultural Heritage Resources Working Group to provide expert advice on improving the conservation and management of maritime heritage resources. The resulting White Paper provided a series of recommendations to both the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Department of the Interior, including new definitions for cultural heritage, marine cultural resources, tribes, indigenous peoples, and cultural landscapes. Central to these recommendations was a strong endorsement for the Cultural Landscape Approach in the understanding and management of maritime heritage resources (or UCH). Subsequently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Maritime Heritage Program has adopted the recommendations of this paper and is implementing a “maritime cultural landscape” approach to the management of cultural resources within the National Marine Sanctuary System. Also as a part of this initiative, NOAA and the Bureau of Ocean Energy and Management (BOEM) have teamed up to support maritime cultural landscape studies of heritage resources by Native American Tribes and Native Hawaiian communities in the Pacific region. These projects on the U.S. West Coast and in the Hawaiian Islands demonstrate the necessity of adapting a broader range of recognized cultural resources and a more inclusive and participatory management and preservation process. Charismatic resources like historic shipwrecks will always provide unique information for archaeologists and historians, but we do ourselves a disservice if we focus solely on these types of properties, and neglect other perspectives and the broader nature of all types and traces of human existence that lie underwater.
Participants in this session will focus on the status of these ongoing ground-breaking projects, the advantages of a broader and more inclusive approach compared to the previous cultural heritage management paradigm in the U.S., and the challenges that this creates.

Dr. Hans Van Tilburg