The Clara Barton Problem
In the mid – 1990s, an incident happened in washing, D.C. that illustrates a gap in protection of cultural resources through which important artifacts and document can fall. The General Services Administration had inherited a building From another, recently disestablished federal agency and proposed to demolish it. The building had been constructed before the civil war, but it had long since lost its architectural integrity through replacement of its facades, so it was determined not eligible for the national register. Hence, no Further review was required under section 106
As the building was being prepared for demolition, a contractor’s employee pried open a long-closed door and found a room whose walls were covered with old wallpaper and that contained a lot of old furniture, plus plaster that had fallen from the ceiling. Papers were sticking down between the lathes off which the plaster had fallen. Curious, the demolition specialist climbed into the crawl space above the room and found it full of papers that had fallen out of some burst-open boxes. He picked up a board lying on the rafters and dusted it off. It was a signboard announcing the presence of the missing Veterans’ Office, under the direction of Miss Clara Barton. He very responsibly turned the sign in, and it wound up with NPS historians who scoured the room and confirmed that it had indeed been where the founder of the American red Cross had operated a program to help grieving families locate the resting places of lost Union soldiers. Apparently, Barton had simply locked the door and walked away when she got better digs in 1865, and the room hadn’t been opened since. Obviously the room and its contents are of great historical interest and interpretive value; it has now been restored and is being preserved and interpreted.
The only reason the signboard was turned over in the first place was that its discoverer was a personal friend of the superintendent of a nearby unit of the National Park System. Otherwise, it might well have been lost, together with the documents and the room.
The documents, which may turn out to be of considerable historical interest, were not federal records, so there was no reliable way they could have been managed under FRA. Neither they nor the signboard were strictly archeological resources, so they weren’t managed under ARPA or 36 CFR 79. Most important, they weren’t detected during the identification phase of the section 106 process, which focused on the character of the building , not its contents.
To guard against future Bartonesque situations, GSA rather red-facedly issued guidance to its field offices calling for identification and management of documents and artifacts under FRA, NHPA, and particularly the Archeological Data Protection Act. Perhaps this will help, but it’s no substitute for a government-wide effort.
We need a systematic approach to identifying and preserving document and objects that are not of an archeological nature, and we don’t have it. A responsible cultural resource manager should be on the lookout for such materials, though, and not be limited by the specifications of the National Register and other federal institutions
. ( เป็นภาษาไทยก็ได้นะคับ )
ใครพออธิบาย บทความภาษาอังกฤษนี้ได้ไหมคับ
In the mid – 1990s, an incident happened in washing, D.C. that illustrates a gap in protection of cultural resources through which important artifacts and document can fall. The General Services Administration had inherited a building From another, recently disestablished federal agency and proposed to demolish it. The building had been constructed before the civil war, but it had long since lost its architectural integrity through replacement of its facades, so it was determined not eligible for the national register. Hence, no Further review was required under section 106
As the building was being prepared for demolition, a contractor’s employee pried open a long-closed door and found a room whose walls were covered with old wallpaper and that contained a lot of old furniture, plus plaster that had fallen from the ceiling. Papers were sticking down between the lathes off which the plaster had fallen. Curious, the demolition specialist climbed into the crawl space above the room and found it full of papers that had fallen out of some burst-open boxes. He picked up a board lying on the rafters and dusted it off. It was a signboard announcing the presence of the missing Veterans’ Office, under the direction of Miss Clara Barton. He very responsibly turned the sign in, and it wound up with NPS historians who scoured the room and confirmed that it had indeed been where the founder of the American red Cross had operated a program to help grieving families locate the resting places of lost Union soldiers. Apparently, Barton had simply locked the door and walked away when she got better digs in 1865, and the room hadn’t been opened since. Obviously the room and its contents are of great historical interest and interpretive value; it has now been restored and is being preserved and interpreted.
The only reason the signboard was turned over in the first place was that its discoverer was a personal friend of the superintendent of a nearby unit of the National Park System. Otherwise, it might well have been lost, together with the documents and the room.
The documents, which may turn out to be of considerable historical interest, were not federal records, so there was no reliable way they could have been managed under FRA. Neither they nor the signboard were strictly archeological resources, so they weren’t managed under ARPA or 36 CFR 79. Most important, they weren’t detected during the identification phase of the section 106 process, which focused on the character of the building , not its contents.
To guard against future Bartonesque situations, GSA rather red-facedly issued guidance to its field offices calling for identification and management of documents and artifacts under FRA, NHPA, and particularly the Archeological Data Protection Act. Perhaps this will help, but it’s no substitute for a government-wide effort.
We need a systematic approach to identifying and preserving document and objects that are not of an archeological nature, and we don’t have it. A responsible cultural resource manager should be on the lookout for such materials, though, and not be limited by the specifications of the National Register and other federal institutions
. ( เป็นภาษาไทยก็ได้นะคับ )