CRM Archaeology
By the mid-1970s, changes in state and federal laws in the 1960s had led to a dramatic shift in the emphasis and structure of state archaeology. The major engine of this shift was rapid post-World War II land development, reservoir and highway construction, and urban sprawl. All of these developments were taking a heavy toll on archaeological sites. We trace the roots and assess the impact in Minnesota of what came to be known as cultural resource management (CRM) archaeology in this section.
The Roots of CRM Archaeology in Minnesota
During Lloyd Wilford’s long tenure at the University of Minnesota (1929-1959), there were no sustained archaeological programs at the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS), the St. Paul Science Museum, or at other universities and colleges in Minnesota. No government agencies had archaeologists. Except for a few New Deal-funded excavations in the pre-WWII period led by G. Hubert Smith, Ralph Brown, and Richard Sackett, the University of Minnesota was the only state institution thoroughly engaged in prehistoric archaeology.20
This began to change in the mid-1950s, and the major engine of change was the escalation of land development mentioned above. State and federal officials initially responded to this threat in reactive rather than proactive ways. For example, in 1951 the Minnesota Highway Department asked its engineers to report archaeological finds encountered by highway construction to the University of Minnesota. There was, however, no legal requirement to salvage the materials or halt construction. Nonetheless, some salvage excavations were carried out under this system. An example is excavations at the Prior Lake Effigy Mounds (21SC16) in 1961, when the mounds were found to be in the path of highway construction. The first major victory for historic preservation in Minnesota was the successful fight in 1956 to save Old Fort Snelling from destruction when the 7th street Bridge was built. The following year, John Callender of the MHS began excavations at Fort Snelling, which was the beginning of forty years of MHS archaeological research at the site.21
In the 1960s and 1970s, the Minnesota Historical Society also began smaller scale excavations at historic sites in the state at the request of the State legislature, which was responding to a growing national interest in history and historic sites. Portions of Sayers Post near Pine City (now called the Northwest Company Post) and Fort Renville, as well as a variety of other sites, were excavated as part of this initiative. During the same period, Alan Woolworth, head archaeologist at the Minnesota Historical Society, conducted extensive excavations at Grand Portage National Monument for the National Park Service. Woolworth worked at Grand Portage between 1961 and 1975, as time and funds permitted. The Minnesota Historical Society had earlier conducted excavations at Grand Portage in 1936 under the direction of Ralph Brown.22
In an effort to reduce site destruction, Elden Johnson and Alan Woolworth, head archaeologist at the Minnesota Historical Society, collaborated to write the Minnesota Field Archaeology Act, which was passed in 1963 (Minnesota Statues 138.31-.42). The Act formally established the Office of the State Archaeologist and required state agencies to submit construction plans to the State Archaeologist if “known or suspected” archaeological sites were to be impacted. Their efforts were given a tremendous boost in 1966 with the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). The federal government’s most significant legislative initiative aimed at reducing the destruction of archaeological and historic sites, the NHPA established the National Register of Historic Places, State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPOs), and the requirement, in Section 106 of the Act, that federal agencies consider the impacts of their activities on historic and archaeological sites. The Minnesota State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) was created soon after the passage of the Act and housed at the Minnesota Historical Society. Today, the State’s SHPO administers the joint state-funded preservation program, the National Register of Historic Places program, and other preservation activities.23 The picture in the paragraph shows Alan Woolworth on the right and Elden Johnson on the left.
The Growth of Public Archaeology
The first major survey program designed to find sites before they were destroyed was started by the Minnesota Highway Department (now MnDOT) in 1968. Housed at the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS), the Minnesota Trunk Highway Archaeological Reconnaissance Study examined areas to be impacted by new state and federal highway projects. Seven years later, MnDOT and the MHS jointly funded the Minnesota Municipal and County Highway Archaeological Reconnaissance Survey to monitor the impact on cultural resources of county and city road projects. MnDOT’s Clem Kachelmeyer administered these two programs and was a key supporter of public archaeology from the inception of the highway survey programs in 1969 until his retirement in 1994. Les Peterson took over direction of the Trunk Highway Survey, and in 1975 the Municipal-County Highway Survey began at MHS under the direction of Scott Anfinson. Over a 26-year span, the MHS-housed highway surveys made major contributions to archaeological research in the state, and helped train numerous archaeologists. The annual and special reports of these programs still represent a major part of the cultural resource management (CRM) literature in Minnesota.24
The first major CRM-sponsored excavation in Minnesota was at the Gull Lake Dam site (21CA37) in 1969. This excavation was sponsored by the Army Corps of Engineers and undertaken by a crew from the University of Minnesota (Johnson 1970, 1971). The year 1969 also had a number of other significant events including the hiring of the first staff member (John Grossman) for the State Historic Preservation Office, the first National Register nomination (the old federal court house in St. Paul), and the hiring of two influential new archaeologists at MHS, Douglas Birk and Gordon Lothson.
By the mid-1970s, cultural resource management (CRM)-sponsored archaeology dominated the agendas of the state’s archaeologists. By 1974, for example, the University of Minnesota, St. Cloud State University, the Science Museum of Minnesota, and the Minnesota Historical Society were all engaged in major federally sponsored archaeological projects. In 1977 the Minnesota State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), using federal and state funds, initiated the Statewide Archaeological Survey (SAS). The objectives of the statewide archaeological survey were to: 1) develop a predictive model for locating prehistoric sites; 2) find significant numbers of previously unrecorded archaeological sites, 3) update the site file regarding the conditions of known archaeological sites, and 4) create a computerized data base of site locations to assist statewide planning. Many of the state’s previously known sites were visited and their site forms updated, and, for the first time, a file folder was made for each site in the state. The file folder system was an extension of the index card system (site files) developed by the University of Minnesota in 1957.
Under the leadership of Ted Lofstrom (1981), the Statewide Archaeological Survey conducted 11 major field surveys in portions of 26 counties. The five-year project spent just over a half-million dollars and documented the presence of 1,000 previously unreported prehistoric sites. The number of new sites increased the number of recorded sites in the state by over a third. Of equal importance, the Statewide Archaeological Survey established standard operating procedures for CRM projects that are still in use in Minnesota today.25
Another state agency, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, became officially involved in state archaeology even earlier. According to the Minnesota Antiquities Act of 1939, the Commissioner of Conservation was responsible for issuing excavation licenses and the staff of the Conservation Department was responsible for enforcing the provisions of the law. In 1964 the State Legislature’s Minnesota Outdoor Recreation Resources Commission (MORRC) stated in a report (“An Archaeology Program for Minnesota”) that “the story of prehistoric man” was “an important natural resource of the state” (MORRC 1964). The new Kathio State Park at Lake Mille Lacs was given priority for a MORRC-funded archaeological survey. The Kathio survey began in 1965 under the direction of Leland Cooper of Hamline University and was continued in following years by Elden Johnson.
The MORRC report also suggests that other parks under development should be surveyed, which led to the work of University of Minnesota graduate student Charles Watrall at Savanna Portage and Maplewood state parks in 1969. In 1974 Elden Johnson wrote a summary of the archaeological work that had been carried out in state parks. MHS staff Robert Vernon, Sue Queripel, and Mike Budak carried out the Minnesota Historical Society’s archaeological surveys at additional state parks in the late 1970s. The contracts for state park surveys shifted back to the University of Minnesota from 1979-1983 under the direction of Jan Streiff. In 1984 a State Parks archaeology program was formally established at the MHS with funding by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). David Radford was hired to direct the survey. The DNR also initiated a Trails and Waterways Survey at MHS a year later under the direction of Patricia Emerson, and in 1995 the DNR started a Forestry archaeology program, once again housed at MHS. Pat Emerson shifted to this program, leaving the Trails and Waterways survey under the direction of Kent Skaar. Fisheries and Wildlife survey programs were added in 2001, once again under Emerson’s leadership.
Federal agencies also began hiring their own staff archaeologists in the 1970s. The St. Paul Army Corps of Engineers hired Jan Streiff as the first district archaeologist in the mid-1970s. Dan Bowman, Audrey Thomas, and Dave Berwick succeeded her, in that order. Following the resignation of Berwick in the late 1990s, the Corps did not designate a supervising district archaeologist in St. Paul, although as of 2003 the Corps had at least three fulltime archaeologists on staff. In 1979 Gordon Peters moved from North Central Zone Archaeologist to the position of Forest Archaeologist at Superior National Forest in northeastern Minnesota. Christy Caine took a similar position at Chippewa National Forest in 1980. Both forests began extensive survey programs to find sites that could be affected by logging and recreational activities. Superior National Forest established a close relationship with the archaeology laboratory at the University of Minnesota Duluth in 1983. In the late 1980s Chippewa National Forest first began working with field schools from the University of Iowa and then Hamline University in the early 1990s.
The Emergence of Private Contract Archaeology
Until the late 1970s, cultural resource management (CRM) archaeological projects were directed by archaeologists at the state’s museums, colleges, and universities. The University of Minnesota had begun the trend with its State Parks survey in the 1960s and then surveys of the Mississippi River Headwaters reservoirs for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers in the late 1970s. At various times between 1970 and 2000, contracting programs were established at Hamline University, St. Cloud, Bemidji, Mankato, Moorhead, the University of Minnesota Duluth and Twin Cities, the Science Museum of Minnesota, and the Minnesota Historical Society.
While the University of Minnesota began to lessen its contract activity in the 1980s, the University of Minnesota Duluth began to aggressively pursue archaeological contracts in the mid-1980s under Susan Mulholland and George Rapp.26 Hamline University began a CRM survey program under Christy Caine in the mid-1970s. When Caine became State Archaeologist in 1978, Christina Harrison briefly took over leadership of the Hamline contracting program. In the late 1970s, four state university programs were undertaking CRM-funded projects under the direction of Richard Lane at St. Cloud, Alan Brew at Bemidji, Richard Strachan at Mankato, and Michael Michlovic at Moorhead.
The Science Museum of Minnesota began bidding for CRM contracts with government agencies in the late 1970s under the direction of Joe Hudak. One of Hudak’s first major contracts was the excavation of a number of sites endangered by the reconstruction of State Highway 23 near Granite Falls. When Orrin Shane replaced Hudak in 1978, contracting activity was significantly reduced as Shane focused on personal research interests. The Minnesota Historical Society had been accepting archaeological contracts from federal agencies on and off since the 1930s and became involved in highway surveys under contract in 1974. However, the MHS Archaeology department started its own general archaeological contracting service with Jerry Oothoudt and Clifford Watson as project employees in 1974. This MHS program lasted only a few years. Department head Bob Clouse became involved in historical archaeological explorations in the Minneapolis Mill District in the mid-1980s as part of two major road projects, the West River Parkway and the Hennepin Avenue Bridge projects. This led to a series of contracts with the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board to explore a proposed Mill Ruins Park in the 1990s.
By the late 1970s, these institutions began to get competition from private contracting firms. Terra Archaeological Services, the first private CRM archaeological firm in Minnesota, was started in 1977 by Clifford Watson and Jerry Oothoudt, who had been laid-off by the Minnesota Historical Society. In 1978 Joe Hudak left the Science Museum of Minnesota to found Archaeological Field Services and Christina Harrison left Hamline University to found Archaeological Research Services. Watson and Oothoudt’s Terra Archaeological Services lasted only three years. In 1984 Hudak abandoned his private company to start BRW, Incorporated’s archaeological contracting services. Vern Helmen, then an archaeologist at Normandale Community College, began another early small CRM firm, which was active in the late 1970s and early 1980s. As of 2003, Harrison’s small firm was still in existence.
BRW’s mid-1980s expansion into archaeological work started a trend among engineering and architectural firms that continues to this day. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, there were 20 private archaeological consulting firms based in Minnesota, with perhaps an equal number working in Minnesota but based elsewhere. Meanwhile, archaeological contracting had largely ceased at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus, throughout the state college system, and at the Science Museum and the Minnesota Historical Society.
Transitions
In the early 1980s, a downturn in natural and state economies, and a shift in priorities at state institutions, led to a downturn in research-oriented archaeological work in Minnesota. The Minnesota Historical Society ended the Statewide Archaeological Survey in 1981. During the state budget crunch of 1982, the MHS laid off most of the staff of the Archaeology Department, retaining only the MnDOT-funded highway program archaeologists and the new department head, Bob Clouse. Since that time, MnDOT and DNR funded survey programs have largely supported and constituted the activities of the Archaeology Department at the MHS, with little internally financed archaeological initiatives.
The MHS’s Ft. Snelling, which could be classified as the largest and longest running archaeological research project in Minnesota, could also be classified as the most under-published. A few brief popular reports published in the early days of Ft. Snelling research represent, for the most part, the sum total of publications after 40 years of archaeological research. With the 2001 departure to Alabama of Bob Clouse, the principal Ft. Snelling excavator, there is little chance that a comprehensive overview of Ft. Snelling archaeology will ever be produced. Larry Zimmerman, a South Dakota and Iowa archaeologist was appointed the new head of the MHS Archaeology Department in 2003, but few of his duties involve archaeological research, and he left the MHS after only one year in that position. Patricia Emerson became the new head of the department in 2005.
Other changes involved a major decline in the 1990s in university-based research driven field projects in the state and in university-based field school training opportunities for the state’s next generation of archaeologists. We believe these declines were largely due to the age of regional academic archaeologists – most were now in their fifties or sixties – and to competition for work and personnel from contract archaeology. Departments of anthropology were also becoming less involved in Indian studies at this time for a variety of reasons, including the emergence of separate Indian Studies departments, a declining interest in local ethnographic research, and a shying away from public controversies between Indians and archaeologists, such as those sparked by the excavation of Indian burial mounds and the Indian demand for the reburial of human remains and grave goods. All of these factors resulted in less departmental support for Indian archaeology, and greater departmental support for historical archaeology and European archaeology, both of which were perceived to be more attractive to students and less controversial.
The University of Minnesota’s Department of Anthropology sponsored summer field schools throughout the tenure of A. E. Jenks, Lloyd Wilford, and Elden Johnson, with a hiatus only during WWII. University field schools remained vigorous throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The last University of Minnesota field school to do major work at Indian sites was Guy Gibbon’s testing of several sites in Itasca State Park in 1988. For the next three summers, Gibbon took the University’s summer field school to the nearby historic ghost town of Mallard. The Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota has not sponsored a field school since 1991, although a number of students have participated in field schools run by other institutions and a variety of contracting projects.
The Science Museum of Minnesota took field schools to a number of southern Minnesota archaeological sites pursuing research driven objectives throughout the decade of the 1970s. Joe Hudak excavated the Pedersen site (21LN2) in 1972 and 1973 with University of Minnesota students, and the Mountain Lake site (21CO2) with a paid crew in 1977. When Orrin Shane replaced Hudak at the science Museum in 1978, he cooperated with the University of Minnesota in investigating Oneota sites in Blue Earth and Faribault counties from 1978 through 1980. With the construction of a field research station on the St. Croix in the early 1990s, the Science Museum sponsored small field schools at the nearby Cross site (21WA93) from 1993 through 2000. Shane left the Science Museum in 2000 for an administrative position in Washington, D.C.
The Office of the State Archaeologist has also gone through significant transition in recent years. Elden Johnson held the position from 1963 to 1978. His former student, Christy Caine, who was state archaeologist until 1992, replaced him when he stepped down from that position. Mark Dudzik was hired in 1994 and Scott Anfinson in turn replaced him in 2006. During the Johnson and Caine administrations, the position was not funded. Dudzik was the first State Archaeologist in Minnesota to receive a salary and to occupy the position as a full-time job. The Office of the State Archaeologist continued to remain homeless until 1997, when it was incorporated into the Department of Administration.
During the Johnson tenure, the state archaeologist’s job mostly involved issuing licenses, keeping the files of known sites current, and providing leadership for archaeological matters in the state. As State Archaeologist, Johnson made a major effort to fund archaeological research in Minnesota and at the same time deal with the increasing pace of site destruction. Although his original work at Kathio State park was driven by the need to mitigate harm to several sites threatened by development activities, he ultimately focused his attention on sites that were not threatened in order to pursue research on the prehistoric use of wild rice and early Dakota history.
Two years after Caine assumed the position, there was a major expansion of the duties of the State Archaeologist when the Private Cemeteries Act (Minnesota Statues 307-8) was amended to make the State Archaeologist responsible for burial site authentication. Along with the expansion of duties, came the expansion of legal issues and conflict between Indians and archaeologists. Caine was at Hamline University when appointed State Archaeologist in 1987, but soon accepted a position with the Chippewa National Forest in north-central Minnesota. She moved the official site files to the University of Minnesota-Duluth in 1987. Although she worked hard to bridge the widening gap between archaeologists and the state’s Indian communities, she was soon perceived by many archaeologists as more of an Indian advocate than a steward, in fact the leading steward, of the state’s archaeological record.
Frustrated by continuing minimal funding for the State Archaeologist, and the increasing level of work and controversy, Caine resigned as State Archaeologist in 1992. The position remained unfilled for two years, until Dudzik became the state’s fourth State Archaeologist in 1994. He lessened the lawsuit burden by following the letter of the law and frequently seeking the advice of the Minnesota Attorney General’s office. However, an uneven relationship soon developed between Dudzik and some of the state’s Indian leadership, mainly due to differences between what the State Archaeologist is legally required to do regarding suspected burial sites and Indian concerns that all such locations are sacred regardless of the current presence of human remains. Minnesota has no provisions for protecting sacred sites.
Basic archaeological methods changed dramatically, too, in the last three decades of the 20th century to meet the needs of cultural resource management objectives and the information demands of the “new” archaeology research program. In the Jenks-Wilford-early Johnson research era, archaeological work focused on the intensive excavation of known sites. The sites were known because they were associated with protruding surface features, such as burial mounds, or because local collectors had reported finding artifacts on them, usually while searching plowed fields. There was little need for archaeologists to go out and find sites because enough locations were already known to keep them busy for many years.
Excavations used large, square units, such as a 10-by-10 foot square. Excavated soil was often not screened or, if it was, it was screened through a ½” mesh, which was considered a small enough mesh to recover large artifacts for basic analysis. Finished stone tools, bone tools, and decorated pottery sherds were the focus of analysis. Almost no attention was paid to plant and animal remains with the exception of human skeletal remains from burial sites.
In cultural resource management, the first and foremost need is to determine if sites are located in the path of proposed construction. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, traditional methods were still being applied to site survey. For example, a standard approach to reconnaissance survey in Minnesota in the early 1970s was to rely on the visual inspection of exposed soil, such as the surface of a plowed field or the dirt around a rodent burrow. The excavation of formal one-meter square test units supplemented this approach when areas of high site potential were found. Surveyors also used soil-coring devices and occasionally measured the phosphate content of soil, for the matrix of past living floors and features often has high phosphate content. However, by the mid-1970s it was becoming increasingly clear that these methods were inefficient, too costly, and otherwise inadequate for CRM survey.
In 1974, Bill Lovis, a Michigan State University archaeologist working in northern Michigan, began to use a new approach to site discovery in wooded environments. He excavated shallow, one-foot square shovel tests placed at 100-yard intervals, and lifted the soil plug to inspect for artifacts. Using this method, Lovis found numerous sites in a relatively rapid fashion. He reported his results at a conference in 1975 and in an article in American Antiquity in 1976. The combination of an explicit survey strategy and a field method that became known as “shovel testing” was rapidly accepted in the Great Lakes states.
The first use of this approach in Minnesota was by MHS archaeologists Doug Birk and Doug George at the Grand Mound site (21KC3) in 1975. By 1977, it was standard survey procedure in Minnesota, with some refinements. The removed soil from the small tests was screened through a ¼” mesh in order to recover small objects that might have escaped notice, the distance (c. 15-meters) between shovel tests was shortened (c.10-15meters), and the shovel tests were arrayed in a systematic, often statistically derived, pattern across the survey area. Shovel tests were dug deep enough (where possible) to sample the entire Holocene soil column. It has also become standard procedure to wash at least samples of soil from larger excavation units through flotation machines to recover small seeds and bones.
This basic approach is still used in most CRM archaeological surveys in vegetated areas of Minnesota. More recent innovations include the use of electronic remote sensing techniques, such as ground penetrating radar and soil resistivity testing, and, for more deeply sites (below one meter), the use of large-diameter mechanical coring devices.
Research Archaeology in the Age of CRM
In 1971, the Council for Minnesota Archaeology (CMA) incorporated with the intention of promoting “archaeological research and interpretation within the State of Minnesota.” The core of its initial membership was the professional, anthropologically oriented archaeologists in the state, all ten of them. The membership of the CMA more than doubled within a decade as the state universities added archaeology programs and emerging cultural resource management needs expanded institutional staffs and promoted private contracting.
The Council for Minnesota Archaeology (CMA) took over production of the Minnesota Archaeological Newsletter from the University of Minnesota. In the 1970s, it sponsored volunteer excavations at the development-threatened Silvernale site (21GD3) in red Wing. It also began a series of spring symposia to explore topics in Minnesota archaeology. The first symposium in 1976 focused on prehistoric ceramics. In 1977, the CMA issued survey standards for doing fieldwork in Minnesota.
However, by the late 1970s the research objectives of the Council for Minnesota Archaeology began to take second place to the resolution of conflicts involving membership, by-law changes, and the amending of the state’s archaeological legislation. Committees proliferated and factions developed. The agenda of the new State Archaeologist dominated the meetings. The organization struggled throughout the 1980s, but was re-invigorated by new members and new challenges in the 1990s. It is now once again focused on its original objective: promoting research.
A second, new organization also began its life focused on the needs for archaeological research in Minnesota. The layoffs at the Minnesota Historical Society in 1982 led to the founding of the Institute for Minnesota Archaeology (IMA) by former MHS archaeologists Douglas Birk, Thomas Trow, and Ted Lofstrom. Clark Dobbs, a doctoral candidate in archaeology at the University of Minnesota, joined them as a founder. Birk and Dobbs focused the early years of the IMA on their personal research interests, Birk at a late 18th century fur post north of Little Falls (21MO20) and Dobbs at Late Prehistoric Mississippian sites near Red Wing. When Elden Johnson retired from the University of Minnesota in 1987, he joined the IMA as its executive director, a post he held until 1991.
As the IMA matured, it became the principle organization in Minnesota promoting state archaeology, mainly by providing opportunities for volunteers to learn methods of artifact analysis in a laboratory setting and, in some respects, of field survey and excavation. To provide funding for its staff and their ambitious objectives, it created a separate for-profit contracting service, the Institute for Minnesota Archaeology Consulting (IMAC), in 1994. Dobbs, with the assistance of Moorhead State graduate Kim Breaky, assumed leadership of IMAC, while Birk remained in the IMA, where he continued his research activities at the Little Falls (now better known as MO20) fur post.
Under mutual agreement and by intent, a substantial share of the profits from IMAC went into the IMA, but this arrangement eventually les to disagreements. In 1999, the organizations split into separate entities, with IMAC assuming the new name of Hemisphere Field Services. To the dismay of most state archaeologists, the contract service went out of business in 2001 and the IMA closed its doors in 2003, ending a 20-year experiment in the promotion of public archaeology in the state.
With the demise of the Institute for Minnesota Archaeology, the lack of interest in archaeology at the Minnesota State Historical Society, and a sharp decrease in field school training opportunities at the state’s universities, a void in research-focused archaeology and student training existed in Minnesota by the early 21st century. The Office of the State Archaeologist filled some of this void. Mark Dudzik attempted to reemphasize the research and leadership roles of the position listed in the Field Archaeology Act, and as once exemplified by Elden Johnson. He actively sponsored conferences and Minnesota Archaeology Week, and in 2003 his office released a major research study of aboriginal burial sites in Minnesota, Arzigian and Stevenson’s Minnesota Indian Mounds and Burial Sites, an effort comparable in scope to Winchell’s earlier The Aborigines of Minnesota.
Current CRM Archaeology in Minnesota
The 1990s witnessed major changes in the structure of archaeology in Minnesota, once again driven by cultural resource management needs. In 1990, the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) hired its first full time archaeologist, Scott Anfinson. In 1992, Christy Caine resigned as State Archaeologist, leaving the position vacant until Mark Dudzik filled it in 1994. The hiring of Dudzik broke the tradition of a student replacing their mentor, for Johnson had trained under Wilford and Caine had trained under Johnson; Dudzik was trained at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Also in 1992, Joe Hudak was hired as the first internal archaeologist at MnDOT. Hudak terminated the two Minnesota Historical Society highway survey programs in 1994, replacing them by a project-by-project private contractor system.
In 1995, MnDOT initiated the multi-million dollar MnModel project in an attempt to refine the SAS site predictive model using a computer-based geographic information system (GIS) approach (Brooks et al. 2002). Initially led by Guy Gibbon, Beth Hobbs, and Allyson Brooks and based at BRW, Inc., MnModel was the first attempt in the nation to develop a statewide predictive model using GIS technology. An accurate statewide predictive model is still some years away, but a number of regional models within the state appear to work well. While the main objective of the MnModel project, which was to assist with highway planning, has yet to be fully realized, it has created a powerful research tool, although non-MnDOT archaeologists have limited access to it.
Changes in the National Historic Preservation Act in 1992 allowed Indian tribes to take on duties previously held by state historic preservation offices (SHPOs). Leech Lake and Mille Lacs Ojibway reservations added Tribal Historic Preservation Offices (THPOs) in 1996 and White Earth Reservation joined them in 2003. The only duties the THPOs have assumed, however, are archaeology related.
The training of cultural resource management (CRM) archaeologists has also entered a more formal stage in the 21st century. For the first 40 years, CRM relied on traditional anthropology-based university training to educate its archaeological practitioners. Focused on developing academic research skills, this type of training did not provide the specific knowledge and skills needed by CRM archaeologists. The University of Minnesota’s Interdisciplinary Archaeological Studies (IAS) graduate program introduced an informal CRM track in 1994 that became an educational center for many of the state’s CRM archaeologists. Although the IAS program was closed in 2002, it was replaced in 2003 by a two-year, professional Master’s degree Cultural Heritage Studies program in the Department of Anthropology.
CRM archaeology now dominates archaeological practice in Minnesota and has since the mid-1970s. In 2003 of the 50 archaeologists with graduate degrees working in Minnesota 44 worked for CRM firms or government agencies; the remaining six are based in museums, colleges, or universities, and engage in some CRM contract work. CRM archaeology will continue to dominate the profession for the foreseeable future, but, as we discuss in the final chapter, some changes are necessary to make it worthwhile.
Contributors to this chapter: Scott Anfinson
Date of last contribution: 2004