Practical Heritage Management: A Reasonable and Good Faith Effort

This comprehensive updated edition of Practical Heritage Management addresses updates in laws and new practices in heritage management, using perspectives from archaeology, history, and architecture.

Cultural heritage management (CHM) is the identification, protection, and interpretation of archaeological sites, historic structures, cultural artifacts, and other elements of cultural heritage both tangible and intangible. In this thoroughly updated and expanded second edition, Scott Anfinson presents a comprehensive overview of American heritage management, as well as a new chapter on international heritage management. This second edition also includes discussion of new guidelines for traditional cultural properties (TCPs) and new regulations implementing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). It has an expanded discussion of Indigenous aspects of CHM including US Pacific Island and Caribbean territories. It also expands the discussion of intangible cultural resources. While emphasizing that the American CHM system in law and practice is currently focused almost exclusively on tangible aspects, intangible aspects are critically important to many communities and help explain the nature of tangible manifestations and how they are deemed significant.

The main purposes of this second edition remain the same as the first edition: to help teach the basics of CHM to the next generation of professionals and to provide current professionals with a detailed overview of the American system.. Unlike other textbooks, Anfinson’s book covers all three major CHM professions: archaeology, history, and architecture, as well as presenting a full chapter on the history of American CHM.
The book chapters cover definitions; a historical background to provide essential context; the legal and procedural framework of the American federal CHM system; the principal professional players in American CHM; Indigenous aspects; international CHM; practical perspectives and critical evaluations of important aspects of and problems with the current American CHM system, with suggestions for improvement.

Scott F. Anfinson is a retired Minnesota State Archaeologist and current advisor on the Minnesota Statewide Survey of Historical and Archaeological Sites Board. He received his bachelor’s degree in anthropology with an archaeology specialty from the University of Minnesota. After finishing his master’s degree work in anthropology/archaeology at the University of Nebraska, he was hired by the Minnesota Historical Society to lead the Minnesota Municipal-County Highway Archaeology Survey.

He became the first full-time archaeologist for the Minnesota State Historic Preservation Office (MnSHPO), helping to implement the National Historic Preservation Act. He also taught cultural heritage management at University of Minnesota’s Anthropology Department. In 2019 he was awarded a Fulbright Research Grant to the University of Oslo in Norway to study CHM. In 2023, he was awarded a second Fulbright to Norway.

Anfinson has written and edited numerous publications including Practical Heritage Management (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), Manual for Archaeological Projects in Minnesota (2011), Southwestern Minnesota Archaeology (1997), The Archaeology of the Central Minneapolis Riverfront (1989, 1990), and A Handbook of Minnesota Prehistoric Ceramics (1978). He has served as president of the Council for Minnesota Archaeology and editor of the Minnesota Archaeologist.