National Park Service Cultural Landscapes Inventory Professional Procedures Guide
Page RR. 2009. National Park Service Cultural Landscapes Inventory Professional Procedures Guide. Cultural Landscape Guidance Documents. NPS Park Cultural Landscapes Program. Park Historic Structures and Cultural Landscapes Program, Washington, D.C.
Cultural landscapes are settings that human beings have created in the natural world. They reveal the fundamental ties between people and the land - ties based on our need to grow food, give form to settlements, meet demands for recreation, and bury our dead. Cultural landscapes are intertwined with patterns both natural and constructed, expressing human manipulation, interpretation, and adaptation to the land and environment. The Cultural Landscapes Inventory (CLI) is an ambitious initiative coordinated by the National Park Service Park Cultural Landscapes Program. It provides a comprehensive inventory of all cultural landscapes in the national park system of historical significance, determined on the basis of being eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The CLI is a management inventory of these landscapes, following policy guidance from the National Historic Preservation Act, NPS Management Policies, and the Cultural Resource Management Guideline. The CLI aids park managers in programming, planning, and recording treatment decisions. Inventories of this type have grown more common as the recognition of cultural landscapes has expanded. Although the efforts vary in scope and involve an array of organizations and professions, they all serve the purpose of documenting the qualities and attributes of a cultural landscape that make it significant and worth preserving. The NPS has documented system-inventories of cultural resources since the 1960s, but it was not until the 1990s that an effort was made to create a Cultural Landscapes Inventory methodology and database. This process has included input from each region, contributing to the broad expertise and geographic diversity that exists in cultural landscape resources of the park service system. These professional procedures introduce the conceptual framework of the CLI, the importance of the service-wide automation system, implementation, and guidance for completing a CLI inventory unit record. The purpose is to ensure consistent and high quality data, in accordance with policy guidance and existing reference materials. This addresses alignment of terminology, process, and content.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Page, Robert
- Date of Issue
- 2009-01
- Publisher
- NPS Park Cultural Landscapes Program
- Units
- CRPS
- Keywords
- claims, CRSS, Cultural Resource Management Guideline, Data Collection, documentation, guidance, instruction, Manual, National Historic Preservation Act, National Register of Historic Places, Policy, Preservation Guidance