IN OCTOBER, the US Department of Homeland Security made an urgent announcement. New barriers and roads were needed along the Texas-Mexico border – but construction was impeded by federally mandated surveys and permits. These protect the environment and archaeological sites. They also take time to complete. To speed construction, the waived compliance with 26 federal laws, eight of which regulate archaeological and/or sacred Indigenous sites.
In 1888, it was looters, not governments, who were barrelling through the past. Anthropologists and Matilda Stevenson knew the looters were winning. They proposed legislation to preserve US archaeological sites on public lands. Their bill was essential – and dead on arrival. Many appreciated the ruins’ beauty but there were votes to consider and things to build. Unprotected, America’s archaeology began to vanish.
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The Papal States had enacted preservation legislation in 1819, England and Ireland in 1882 and France in 1887. The US, meanwhile, was watching the past disappear.
In 1892, years of preservation advocacy paid off when president Benjamin Harrison 195 hectares around Arizona’s Casa Grande ruins. As the US’s first archaeological preserve, it was a victory. But ancient sites elsewhere remained defenceless.
Slowly, preservationists succeeded in protecting single places of antiquity, such as , which dates to around 1100. But this didn’t prevent looting of , which date from the 7th to the 13th century. At sites across the US, visitors filled their pockets with artefacts.
Comprehensive preservation legislation was needed. The marked the first general protection of US historic properties. The , which urged harmony between preservation of the past and future development, followed in 1966.
Thousands of archaeological sites have been preserved through section 106 of the NHPA, which requires federal entities to consider the potential effects of their actions on historic properties prior to development. But by sleight of hand, protections of the past are now being weakened. An act introduced in March could, if passed, exempt many oil and gas drilling projects from section 106 compliance, endangering multiple potential sites.
There is also good news. In June, on new oil, gas and mining development around New Mexico’s Chaco Culture National Historical Park was announced. In August, the Biden administration established the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument in Arizona, protecting some 400,000 hectares from uranium mining, following a decade of Indigenous advocacy.
Et voilà! The past is preserved. Like other national monuments created by the Biden administration, these protections are a cause for celebration – for now. It is worth remembering that president Barack Obama’s 2016 of Bears Ears National Monument, preserving thousands of Utah’s sites, was celebrated too. But with a wave of the executive pen, president Donald Trump the area of the monument. It wasn’t restored until 2021. Preservation by executive action is a precarious solution, susceptible to the political agenda of the presidency.
And it would be a mistake to assume that existing legislation will hold fast. Protecting the past means paying close attention to the swings of the preservation pendulum as efforts to speed development threaten protections of archaeological sites. Because once gone, no magic words will restore the past.
Rachel Morgan is an archaeologist and author of Sins of the Shovel
