Codifying the "authentic" in the National Register and Cultural Resource Management--Katie Moore

Authenticity is a precarious concept.  As Bendix discusses in this weeks reading, authenticity is at once viewed as a “treasure”, a problem, an experience, an “emotional and moral quest,” a dichotomy, and a political and social tool.  Bendix proposes that “the crucial questions to be answered are not ‘what is authenticity?’ but ‘who needs authenticity and why?’ and ‘how has authenticity been used?’” (1997:21). This resonated with the concepts I’ve been working over in another class I’m taking this semester: Cultural Resources Management (CRM).  For those who don’t know, CRM (known to many as synonymous with “contract archaeology”) is an industry tied closely to federal legislation mandating that projects using federal funds must consider the impacts on “cultural resources” before proceeding.  What are cultural resources? Loosely defined, they are the material items that are a source of history and knowledge, such as buildings, structures, archaeological sites, etc.  Part of evaluating the impacts of a “federal undertaking” on cultural resources (known in the legislation as “historic properties,” although they are not confined to the historic period) requires identifying what resources are in the project area and establishing whether they are eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.  What does cultural resource management have to do with authenticity? Well, here’s my stab at pulling together my meditations on this for the week.

The National Regiser could be considered one of the cultural institutions Bendix mentions as “means to establish authority over a landscape of shifting cultural productions” (1997:123). In order for a historic property to be eligible for listing on the National Register, it must meet certain “criteria,” listed as follows:

The quality of significance in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture is present in districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that possess integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association and

(a) that are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history; or

(b) that are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past; or

(c) that embody distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction, or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction; or

(d) that have yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history.

(36CFR60.4, emphasis added)

The National Register, a great tool for protecting and preserving important parts of the country’s prehistory and history, also codifies the criteria for what qualifies as “authentic” American history and culture.  There are multiple issues that come into play with the applications of this terminology to real-life nominations for the National Register.  Who determines what is “significant” to American history and culture?  Who are they referring to in the phrases “our history” and “our past,” who are “we”?  And how do we determine the “integrity” of “feeling” and “association” when those who are evaluating these applications may not be a part of the group of stakeholders in a historic property?  All of these are questions of authenticity, legitimacy of authenticity, and authority over authenticity.  The National Register is meant to document and protect sites that are important to American history and culture, but there is always the question of whose story we want to tell, who belongs as a part of America’s authentic past.  Is a historic site representing the repression and abuse of African slaves a site that “we” as Americans want to preserve?  In the early years of living history museums like Colonial Williamsburg, slavery was not a story told to the public.  Instead it was skimmed over in a celebratory history of colonial America’s important white men and fastidiously manicured buildings creating a National Register historic district.  Hardly authentic, although it is still assumed to be by much of the visiting public.

            Ultimately, the eligibility of a “historic property” on the National Register comes down to the perceived “authenticity” of the site and a group’s connection to or affiliation with that site. Often this must be proved through association with that historic property over time in a way that has been culturally or historically “significant” and which still retains its “integrity.”  Integrity essentially means that it still looks and “feels” much like it did in the past, and would be still recognized as such by a user of the property.  However, the cultural traditions of a group are not static even when the group itself perceives their traditions as “authentic,” implying historicity and continuity over time.  This can create problems when trying to pinpoint the layered history and significance of a site to the many stakeholders who view their relationship to a site as most authentic.  It also charges practitioners of CRM and the National Register with the “endowed [authority]…of knowing how to recognize or, if necessary, to recover the authentic” (Bendix 1997:123).