Although it is not possible to link any single specific year with the initiation of Cultural Resource Management (CRM), 1974 certainly was a banner year for activities and events that were key to its development in the United States. At the beginning of the year, in the January 25th issue of the Federal Register, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) published the “Procedures for the Protection of Historic and Cultural Properties.” These procedures are designated formally as Title 36 (Parks, Forests, and Public Property), Chapter VIII (Advisory Council on Historic Preservation), Part 800 of the United States Code of Federal Regulations (36 CFR 800). They more commonly and frequently are referred to simply as the “Section 106 procedures,” named after the section of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (NHPA) that they implement. By whatever name, this set of regulations has had a substantial impact on how most CRM investigations are conducted in the United States for over 40 years (e.g., King 2004:81-190).
In April, the 1974 Cultural Resource Management Conference was held in Denver (Lipe and Lindsay 1974). Between July and November of 1974, the Airlie House Seminars on the management of archaeological resources were held at the Airlie House conference center in northern Virginia outside Washington, DC (McGimsey and Davis 1977). Presentations and discussions at these meetings focused on how to interpret new laws, regulations, and other governmental directives affecting archaeological resources and the anticipated changes in the practice of archaeology that would be necessary to address appropriately these environmental and historic preservation requirements. At the meetings there were discussions about the need to develop approaches and methods that focused on the conservation of archaeological resources, as opposed to excavation.
The Denver conference and the Airlie House seminars attendees were individuals, in academic, public agency, and museum organizations involved in addressing the problems associated with preservation of archaeological and other historic data and properties in the United States. Gathered at these meetings were archaeologists, resource managers, and experts from government agencies and academic institutions who began the practice of CRM and subsequently developed the concepts, methods, and procedures of the sub-discipline.
The fourth event was the publication of an influential article by Bill Lipe, “A Conservation Model for American Archaeology” in The Kiva. Lipe forcefully and to wide effect pointed out that the archaeological record is a “non-renewable” resource. He noted that while it is true that highway construction, mining activities, reservoir creation, looting, vandalism, and the forces of nature all are capable of destroying archaeological sites, archaeologists also exploit the resource. Archaeological fieldwork also preserves data about and from the sites where it takes place, but in the process the in situ resources are destroyed. Lipe’s main point was that archaeologists needed to work at conserving the in situ archaeological record, as well as, salvaging or rescuing archaeological data that was threatened by modern developments. Lipe advocated an approach to the archaeological record that would “…avoid our getting to last-ditch, emergency salvage situations (Lipe 1974:215).” Along with Bob McGimsey’s Public Archaeology (1972), Lipe’s article is regarded widely as establishing a philosophical foundation for the conservation-oriented contemporary CRM policy.
One new law fills out this list of notable 1974 events. The Archaeological Recovery Act, known more commonly as the Archeological and Historic Preservation Act of 1974 (AHPA), and within the archaeological community often referred to as the Moss-Bennett Act (named for the primary sponsors of the bills, Senator Frank Moss of Utah and the Representative Charles E. Bennett of Florida) was enacted. Formally, the new statute amended the Reservoir Salvage Act of 1960 and clearly broadening the obligations of federal agencies to take account of archaeological sites that their actions affected. In particular the amendment authorized the use of project funds for archaeological investigations required as part of agency projects.
The term “cultural resources management” developed within the discipline of archaeology in the United States during the early 1970s. Fowler (1982:1) attributes the first use of the term "cultural resources" to specialists within the National Park Service (NPS) in 1971 or 1972. Shortly after this, the word "management" became linked with cultural resources, for example, in the title of the 1974 Cultural Resource Management Conference held in Denver (Lipe and Lindsay 1974) and in the Cultural Resource Management seminar that was part of the Airlie House workshops held in 1974 (McGimsey and Davis 1977). McGimsey (1991, 2004:3-7) concludes that, while the term came into use during the early 1970s, “as a coherent, identified concept applicable to…archaeology, it crystallized in the minds of a few archaeologists at the Airlie House conference in 1974 and was given formal birth, or at least christened, with the publication of that report (McGimsey and Davis 1977).”