Eight disciplines, and which one your project actually needs

Archaeological firms carry out the phased fieldwork that most ground-disturbing projects need: a Phase I pedestrian survey and shovel testing to find sites, Phase II testing to judge whether a site is eligible for the National Register, and Phase III data recovery when it is and cannot be avoided.

Preservation consultants manage the paperwork that keeps a project moving: Section 106 review, National Register nominations, state and federal rehabilitation tax credit applications, and the design review that comes with a locally designated property.

Full-service CRM firms bundle archaeology, history, architectural history and tribal coordination under one contract, which is what a large linear project — a pipeline, transmission line or highway — usually needs so the compliance record stays in one place.

Architectural historians survey standing buildings rather than buried sites — recording a structure to HABS/HAER standards, assessing a historic district, or writing the building inventory that a Section 106 review depends on.

Tribal consultation is a government-to-government process, and firms that specialise in it coordinate with Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, prepare ethnographic and traditional cultural property studies, and handle NAGPRA inventories and repatriation.

Geophysical survey and remote sensing find what a shovel test grid misses. Ground-penetrating radar, magnetometry, resistivity and LiDAR let a firm map buried features before ground is broken, which is often cheaper than excavating blind.

Excavated collections have to go somewhere that meets the federal curation standards, and someone has to analyse, catalogue and store them. Curation specialists handle artifact analysis, cataloguing to state standards, and long-term repository arrangements.

Cultural resources are one chapter of an environmental document, and firms that work inside NEPA and state permitting keep the archaeology, biology and permitting schedules from colliding — usually the difference between a project that closes its compliance record and one that does not.