Monday, September 03, 2018

Cultural Landscapes: In the Eye of the Beholder (King)

   Not the best produced video visually, and I'm only partway through watching it, but it is from the National Park Service:
   "This webinar was produced as part of the ArcheoThursday Topics in Archeology Webinar Series hosted by the Archeology Program of the National Park Service, Washington D.C. office. The series was partly supported with help from Archaeology Southwest. For this webinar, Michael Roller invited archeologist, preservationist and author Tom King to present on research associated with the series theme of archeological landscapes.
Presentation Abstract: Archaeologists are often called upon to identify and evaluate all kinds of historic places, including cultural landscapes. In doing so, it’s important to remember one’s cultural anthropology. Cultural landscape identification and evaluation are essentially ethnographic operations. One needs to find the people – indigenous groups, local residents, visitors – who value the landscape and see if they’ll tell you what they value and why. Then think about how these values relate to the National Register criteria. It’s especially important to think about “integrity” with reference to the views of those who value a place. The fact that a place may have been modified in the past, that its soils may be disturbed, even that it may seem completely screwed up to you doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s lost integrity in the eyes of those who value it. In the end it’s their values, not yours, that matter most."


I'll also be exploring his blog: http://crmplus.blogspot.com/
Thomas F. King holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of California Riverside (1976), and has worked since the 1960s in the evolving fields of research and management variously referred to as heritage, cultural resource management, and historic preservation.  He is particularly known for his work with Section 106 of the U.S. National Historic Preservation Act, and with indigenous and other traditional cultural places.
King is the author and editor of ten textbooks and tradebooks (See http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-F.-King/e/B001IU2RWK/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1353864454&sr=1-2-ent)  as well as scores of journal articles, popular articles, and internet offerings on heritage topics.  His career includes the conduct of archaeological research in California and the Micronesian islands, management of academy-based and private cultural resource consulting organizations, helping establish government historic preservation systems in the freely associated states of Micronesia, oversight of U.S. government project review for the federal government’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, service as a litigant and expert witness in heritage-related lawsuits, and extensive work as a consultant and educator in heritage-related topics.  He is the co-author of the U.S. National Park Service's government-wide guidance on "traditional cultural properties" (TCPs; see http://www.nps.gov/nr/publications/bulletins/pdfs/nrb38.pdf).  He occasionally teaches short classes about historic preservation project review, traditional cultural places, and consultation with indigenous groups, and consults and writes as TFKing PhD LLC.  Current major clients include several American Indian tribes and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. 
Since 1989 King has also served as volunteer Senior Archaeologist on The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery’s Amelia Earhart Project, testing the hypothesis that the famous aviation pioneer landed and died on Nikumaroro Island in the Republic of Kiribati.  His co-authored book, Amelia Earhart’s Shoes, was published by AltaMira Press in 2001, with an updated paperback edition in 2004 (See www.tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/BookReviews/shoesreview.html), His historical novel Thirteen Bones, about the 1940 discovery of Earhart's remains, was published in 2009 (See http://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Bones-Tom-King-Thomas/dp/1608441857/ref=la_B001IU2RWK_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1353864465&sr=1-6).    


Here too I'll be doing some reading: https://independent.academia.edu/ThomasKing3

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