The Departmental Consulting Archeologist: A History

Why the post was created

After the Department of the Interior was founded in 1849, it became involved in archeology on the lands it managed, especially in the West. Several pressures led to an archeologist at the department level to advise the Secretary:

• growing looting and vandalism on federal lands, which led to the Antiquities Act of 1906;
• new reservations, national parks and national monuments set aside to protect archeological sites;
• the need to coordinate permits for museums and other institutions;
• interest from Congress in all of this.

Jesse Nusbaum, the first

In 1927, Department Order No. 229 named Jesse L. Nusbaum — NPS archeologist and superintendent of Mesa Verde National Park — the first "Archaeologist for the Department of the Interior," directing bureaus to refer archeological matters to him.

Order No. 393, two years later, made him the gatekeeper: all requests to explore prehistoric ruins on the public domain, in national parks and on Indian reservations went to him, and no one could excavate or remove prehistoric relics without the Secretary's consent.

Nusbaum's work centered on Antiquities Act permits:

• reviewing permit applications;
• visiting excavations each field season to check the work;
• advocating better protection of sites on Interior lands;
• preventing illegal digging and collecting on federal and tribal lands;
• encouraging institutions to publish results of permitted research.

He wrote four annual reports, for 1929, 1930, 1931 and 1932 (the last drafted but never printed; it is in the department's files). The title Departmental Consulting Archeologist (DCA) dates from 1931. Nusbaum held the post until he retired in 1957.

The DCA today

The Secretary still delegates the DCA's duties to the Chief Archeologist of the National Park Service. The DCA has:

• helped build the Federal Archeology Program, spanning every land-managing agency and hundreds of archeologists in forests, parks, districts and offices nationwide;
• led collection of data on archeological activity for the Secretary's Report to Congress;
• led workgroups on issues such as permits and collecting;
• coordinated and directed the Federal Archeology Program as a whole.

Sources

Based on "History of the Departmental Consulting Archeologist," National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.