Kevin C Nolan

In May 2024 heritage professionals representing state/federal agencies, Tribal Nations, private firms, academia and museums participated in the “Airlie House 2.0: Visioning Future Directions in CRM Archaeology” workshop. The original Airlie House set the course for 50 years of public archeology; we set out to plan for the next 50. The National Park Service and Society for American Archaeology (SAA) led a coalition of organizations for an inclusive, all-hands-on-deck effort to build a better future archaeology. Since January, protections for heritage in the US have been compromised. Many federal agencies’ staff responsible for compliance were forced out of their positions. This hobbled many of our action plans; however, the four focus areas of the workshop are more important than ever before. Those focus areas are 1) workforce training and education; 2) centering communities and inclusivity; 3) preserving collections, including records; and 4) streamlining compliance and implementing creative mitigation of impacts. There is an urgent need to reconvene, particularly with representatives of heritage organizations, to plan how to make tangible progress on each focus area in this new reality. An added need is to document heritage frameworks currently being dismantled creating a trail of breadcrumbs for our future selves.