Careers in the Field of Cultural Preservation Management

Oct 13, 2011
Laure Justice

Archaeological Dig at Historic Jamestowne - Sarah Stierch

Three main career fields fall under the umbrella of cultural preservation management: cultural resource; landscape; and heritage management.

Cultural preservation, in its broadest sense, is the telling and recording of stories. Sometimes the people are here, living and able to share the stories to be recorded. Sometimes the people have long since passed away, leaving behind artifacts that can be preserved, analyzed, and recorded today in order to piece together a sense of the bygone cultures.

Cultural preservation is a fairly young field compared to some of the other social sciences. The first official cultural resource management program was introduced in 1974 by the US Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation. Since the inception of the first CRM program, the field has been quietly emerging as a viable career choice, bringing with it new laws and a couple of interesting peripheral career fields. The related fields in question are cultural landscape preservation and management as well as cultural heritage management.

Cultural Resource Management

CRM is where the field of cultural preservation was launched. While many people were concerned about the loss of cultures and human history, it took an official act and over thirty years of effort to turn it into a viable career option. While cultural resource managers can be trained in many fields, social science fields are the usual background, such as the field of archaeology.

Work conditions in the CRM field vary greatly, from office management tasks to hands-on field work at an archaeological dig. The pay for CRM managers can be attractive, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics citing an annual pay rate between $32,150 on the low end and $89,490 for top earners in the field.

Cultural Landscape Preservation and Management

The field of cultural landscape preservation and management, or CLP&M, focuses on places of historic interest, cultural significance, and the natural landscape that is part of a culture's story. Examples of CLP&M projects include preserving ancient drawings on cave walls, protecting mounds created by the mound-builder people, as well as maintaining man-made structures such as the Egyptian pyramids.

Training in this field is available through archaeological studies programs as well as architectural programs, such as the Cultural Landscape Preservation and Management program at UC Berkeley.

Cultural Heritage Management

Cultural heritage management is the most closely related to CRM, and includes many of the same job description details. It is, however, most often associated with preserving existing cultures, such as remaining Native American cultures, while CRM more broadly embraces both existing and extinct cultures.

Learning about human history and preserving endangered cultures can be more than an interesting hobby for individuals entering one of the three areas of the cultural preservation management. It can be an exciting and lucrative career.

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