What the Heck is Cultural Resource Management?

A term often bandied about by archaeologists and others in the commercial end of the field of archaeology is 'cultural resource management' (often abbreviated CRM). You'll hear CRM commonly mentioned in passing during highway road plan construction and urban renewal projects. Often the term is misused, to mean something along the lines of "archaeological research in advance of highway projects" but CRM is actually a process, the process of making decisions about the whole range of existing cultural resources in the face of demands of modern development.

• So what does "cultural resource management" really mean?
• More Cultural Resource Management resources

The image on this blog was created by Flickrite Ebad Hashemi in protest of the construction of the Sivand dam in Iran that threatens the archaeological sites of Pasargadae and Persepolis. A huge archaeological salvage project is currently underway in the Bolaghi Valley. Read more about the Sivand Dam situation on the Circle of Iranian Studies website.