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Heritage Designation and Property Values: is there an effect?

Robert Shipley, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada Abstract This paper describes research that was designed to examine the assertion that historic designation of properties, under the heritage legislation in Canada’s largest province, has a negative impact on the values of those properties. The actual selling price of subject properties was used to establish their value history trends, which were then compared to ambient market trends within the same communities. Almost 3,000 properties in twenty-four communities were investigated, in what is believed to be the largest study of its kind ever undertaken in North America. It was found that heritage designation could not be shown to have a negative impact. In fact there appears to be a distinct and generally robust market in designated heritage properties. They generally perform well in the market, with 74% doing average or better than average. The rate of sale among designated properties is as good or better than the ambient marke

The Indigenous Transformation of Archaeological Practice

Claire Smith Claire Smith is Associate Professor of Archaeology at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia and is currently President of the World Archaeological Congress A quiet revolution is happening in archaeology: Indigenous knowledge and worldviews are transforming important aspects of archaeological practice. This is not a revolution that aims to upturn current practices. Rather, it involves enriching and broadening these practices and breaking down stereotypes from two directions. The expanding interface between Indigenous peoples and archaeology is creating a zone in which both archaeologists and Native peoples can move toward a better understanding of each other. This moves beyond an unthinking contrast between “us” (Indigenous peoples or archaeologists) and “them” (archaeologists or Indigenous peoples), failing to recognize the elisions between the two, especially in terms of the numbers of Indigenous archaeologists. (Note that I use the term “Indigenous peoples,” wi

The Emergence of Geoarchaeology in Research and Cultural Research Management: Part II

Joseph Schuldenrein-Principal and President of Geoarcheology Research Associates. In Part I of this two-part series on geoarchaeology in cultural resource management (CRM) that appeared in the November issue of The SAA Archaeological Record, the general concepts and principles of geoarchaeology were discussed, and fieldwork and sampling were introduced. In this final article, a detailed assessment of geoarchaeology’s utility for compliance work in CRM is provided. Geoarchaeology can and should be integrated in each phase of the compliance process. Reference here is made to the discovery/survey (Phase I), testing (Phase II), and data recovery (Phase III) stages of an undertaking. Withinthese broad parameters, the degree to which earth science approaches are applied varies by specific Scopes of Work (SOW), regulatory requirements (federal, state, and municipal), and even by contractor. In this brief summary, I touch on some of the more critical elements of geoarchaeological application a