Measuring CRM

By Sarah Herr and Christopher D. Dore (Desert Archaeology, Inc. & The Louis Berger Group,

Inc.)

The passage of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of 1966 mandated that federal projects consider their effects on cultural resources. Cultural Resource Management (CRM) as an industry developed to fill the need for these mandated archaeological services when federal agencies and universities could not meet the demand (Elia 2003).

Cultural Resource Management is a term for the applied, or non-academic, practice of historic preservation, history, archaeology, anthropology, architectural history, historical architecture, landscape architecture and specialty subfields such as geoarchaeology, soil science, and ethnobotany.

This poster focuses on characterizing CRM in the United States. There are also mature private-sector CRM industries in Canada, Western Europe, Japan, and Australia, as well as developing industries in other countries. The poster also has an archaeological bias; after all, this is the SAA meeting!

Tasks typically performed by CRM companies include: •archaeological and ethnographic survey (inventory)•recording historic buildings•consulting with descendant communities, including Native American tribes•evaluating resources according to local ordinances, state and federal standards•providing advice to landowners and developers to help them comply with local, state, and federal regulations, including Section 106 of the NHPA

WHAT IS WHAT IS CRMCRM??

Measuring CRM in the United States is difficult because the federal government doesn’t recognize CRM as an industry and doesn’t track it through government statistics. So, what we know about CRM comes from a variety of sources, requires a lot of assumptions, and necessitates creative analyses.

Most estimates of archaeologists in the United States come from surveys conducted by professional organizations such as the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) and the American Cultural Resource Association (ACRA). The accuracy of these data for the current study are affected by how well their membership represents the CRM industry and the responsiveness of the surveyed population.

WHAT’S THE WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?PROBLEM?

$$$$$$

In 2005, the SAA membership committee estimated that about 70 percent of U.S. archaeologists were non-academics and non-academics comprised 55.5 percent of SAA’s membership. That survey estimated approximately 5000 archaeologists worked outside of academia (Phillips 2005)

In 1994, the SAA conducted a census of its 5000 members and 1000 non-members. The 63 non-academics who reported receiving CRM funding, collected $300 million during a 5 year period (Zeder 1997).

In 2005, Doelle and Phillips extrapolate from ACRA information on membership and firm size to estimate that CRM firms do $250 million of work per year.

Bodies

O-Net is a US Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration-sponsored project that provides career information about skills, wages, and trends in the job market. O-Net estimates that 6,000 anthropologists and archaeologists currently work outside the academic setting. It also identifies this sector of the economy as growing faster than average, with an expected growth of 150 percent between 2006 and 2016.

Growth rate

PAST PAST MEASURESMEASURES

CRM Sector Description CountPublic Federal Government 975

State Departments of Transportation 375

State Historic Preservation Offices (N=58) 1200

Tribal Historic Preservation Offices (N=78) 230

Other State and Municipal Agencies 1,000

Private   10,000

TOTAL ALMOST 14,000

 (Altschul and Patterson 2008; Childs 2009; NCSHPO 2009; THPO 2009)

Current Measures of bodies

HOW HOW BIGBIG IS THE INDUSTRY IS THE INDUSTRY NOW?NOW?

Annual expenditures for services by public and private sector clients have recently been estimated between $683 million and $1 billion (Altschul and Patterson 2008). This estimate is based upon actual public expenditures and informal surveys of CRM senior management on the scale of private sector funding.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIVATE DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIVATE SECTORSECTOR

Counting Companies

To measure the scale of cultural resource management in the private sector we compiled the names of companies listed by state historic preservation offices, professional organizations, and job listing services. In all, 1,624 companies with offices in the United States have been identified. Only West Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts did not have lists.

This compilation provides a nearly complete inventory of companies that perform archaeological assessments. Where it probably falls short is in identifying architectural companies who work in CRM. These businesses are less likely to be listed by SHPO offices, and more likely to work locally. As such, they may not be on the lists of adjacent states.

In addition, over 525 individual consultants are identified on these same lists.

Estimating individual practitioners is difficult. Conservatively, the number of archaeologists alone working in the cultural resource industry is 5,150 professionals and 2,200 full-time-equivalent technicians (Altschul and Patterson 2008). Technicians are often employed seasonally. ACRA estimates 6,000 CRM professionals. Dore and Herr (n.d.) forecast over 9,000 salaried employees in private-sector CRM firms, of which at least 5,000 are archaeologists.

Statistical Research, Inc. is thought to be the largest cultural resource-only firm in the country with approximately 160 employees in 8 offices in 5 states.

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800

Other

Landscape Architecture

Real Estate

Geosciences

Preservation

History

Specialized

Environmental

Architectural History

Archaeology

Number of companies

Contrary to popular belief, private-sector CRM archaeologists make less than archaeologists in government and academic-based archaeologists. Benefits also tend to be the lowest in the private sector.

Archaeological field technicians have the lowest salaries. As shown here, mean wages vary considerably by region. Technician positions may be full-time or part-time and benefits vary based upon the size of the company.

Within the private sector, managers and administrators have the highest salaries.

POOR MAN, RICH MAN, BIG-MAN, CHIEF

Mean Annual Salary

$0 $10,000

$20,000

$30,000

$40,000

$50,000

$60,000

$70,000

$80,000

$90,000

$100,000

PrincipalDivision Manager

Office ManagerProject Manager

HistorianArchitectural

Preservation PlannerPrincipal Investigator

GIS AnalystEditor

Production AssistantField Director

Laboratory DirectorGraphic Artist

Crew ChiefSenior ArchaeologicalLaboratory Technician

Archaeological

Priv

ate-

Sect

or P

ositi

on

$13.63$10.44

Wagers and Nicholson 2008

RICH MAN

POOR MAN

Vernon Research Group 2007

HOW MUCH DO HOW MUCH DO CRMCRM EMPLOYEES MAKE? EMPLOYEES MAKE?

Management. The successful management of CRM businesses and government programs relies on good comparative data.

Jobs and Training. Graduate schools have traditionally trained students for jobs in academia. Ultimately, many graduates will be employed in community colleges, museums, non-profits, the government, and the private sector. How many jobs are there? Where are those jobs? How does the demand for jobs outside academia match the number of qualified graduates (Altschul and Patterson 2008)? Are universities and colleges training students for the jobs they are likely to obtain? Increasingly, departments are offered programs in applied archaeology (Neusius 2008).

Political Clout. When Historic Preservation laws are challenged by politicians our professional organizations, such as the Society for American Archaeology and the Society of Historical Archaeology, and our trade organization, the American Cultural Resources Association, represent CRM interests to the government. When talking with the government, numbers matter! Do we really know what portion of the American economy CRM represents?

WHY IT WHY IT MATTERSMATTERS

 Altschul, Jeffrey H. and Thomas C. Patterson. 2008 Trends in Employment and Training in American Archaeology. In Voices in American Archaeology, edited by Wendy Ashmore, Dorothy Lippert, and Barbara J. Mills. SAA Press, Washington, D.C. (in review).  Childs, S. Terry2009 Commentary. In The SAA Archaeological Record (January 2009) Volume 9 (1), 37-39. Doelle, William H. and David A. Phillips2005 From the Academy to the Private Sector: CRM’s Rapid Transformation within the Archaeological Profession. In Southwest Archaeology in the Twentieth Century, edited by Linda S. Cordell and Don D. Fowler, pp. 97-108. The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City. Dore, Christopher D. and Sarah A. Herrn.d. An Economic Analysis of the Archaeological Labor Shortage and its Effects on the Cultural Resources Industry. Manuscript in preparation. Elia, Richard J. 2003 Contract Archaeology in the United States. In M.A.T.R.I.X: Making Archaeology Teaching Relevant in the XXI Century. http://www.indiana.edu/~arch/saa/matrix/ael/ael_mod11.htm.  Neusius, Sarah W. 2009 Changing the Curriculum: Preparing Archaeolologists for Careers in Applied Archaeology. The SAA Archaeological Record (January 2009) Volume 9 (1), 18-22. Phillips, David A.2005 Initial Estimate of the Number of Professional Archaeologists in the United States Using Data From the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Membership Committee report to the Board of Directors, January 14, 2005. (Draft). Vernon Research Group2007 ACRA Salary Survey. American Cultural Resources Association. Wagers, Scott J. and Chris Nicholson2008 What are Archaeological Field Technicians Paid? SAA Archaeological Record 8(2):36-39. Zeder, Melinda A.1997 The American Archaeologist: A Profile. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek.  

References References CitedCited

Websites consultedWebsites consulted • American Cultural Resource Association: www.ACRA-CRM.org 

• ASC Anthropological Studies center: www.sonoma.edu/asc/aboutus/crm.htm.  • Bureau of Labor Statistics: www.bls.gov/

• National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers: www.nathpo.org/map.html

• O*Net Resource Center: www.onetcenter.org/

Thank you Jeffrey Altschul, Terry Childs, and Teresita Majewski

AcknowledgmeAcknowledgmentsnts