Strategies for meaningful engagement: A commentary on collaboration in archaeological climate adaptation planning

Abstract

There are calls from cultural resources professionals, academics, and diverse stakeholders for multivocality, co-creation of knowledge, and inclusion of local and traditional input in the management of cultural resources situated on public lands. Yet, associated communities often have little control or influence on management of their heritage sites beyond mandated consultation, particularly for archaeological sites. In a US National Park Service (NPS) context, managers are guided by standardized criteria, existing data management systems, and policy- and eligibility-based funding streams. The influences of these criteria, systems, and policies are particularly powerful when managers are prioritizing action for climate adaptation, as policy guidance focuses attention to cultural resources that are both significant and vulnerable to climate stressors. The results of a variety of engagement activities with Tribal Nations and NPS staff show that the co-creation of knowledge requires meaningful engagements, the valuing of Traditional Knowledges, and bridging the culture–nature divide. This paper highlights successful examples of such meaningful engagements and offers strategies for collaboration between NPS and citizens and staff of Tribal Nations in climate change adaptation planning for cultural resources on public lands. Scholars are increasingly documenting the exposure of archaeological sites to climate change stressors (e.g., Rockman 2015; Anderson et al. 2017; Sesana et al. 2021). The impacts of these stressors to sites are also being documented with more frequency, such as the deterioration of materials from increasingly salinized soils and extreme fires (Gruber 2011), and the displacement and loss of materials and physical context from erosion caused by riverine flooding (Howard et al. 2016), storm surge (Pollard-Belsheim et al. 2014), and sea level rise (Papadopoulos et al. 2021). On federal lands, climate adaptation guidance for archaeological sites typically focuses on minimizing physical deterioration or loss given management agencies’ mandate of responsible cultural heritage stewardship (Rockman et al. 2016; Venture et al. 2021). Yet,