Preventing Archaeological Disasters and Facilitating Cultural Resource Protection: One Nonprofit’s Attempt to Plug CRM Gaps in the U.S.
Mary Rossi currently serves as Program Director for APT-Applied Preservation Technologies, a program of the Bellingham-based nonprofit Eppard Vision. As Program Director, Mary provides cultural resource consulting services and educational programming to a wide range of clients, including tribal communities, government agencies, engineers, developers, and cultural resource professionals. Mary has fifteen years of cultural resource planning experience, including six years as an employee of the Lummi Nation, first as an Archaeological Field Crew Supervisor on the Semiahmah Recovery Effort and then as the tribe’s first Tribal Historic Preservation Officer (THPO). Mary received a Master’s Degree in Anthropology from Western Washington University in 1998.
Be sure to visit 'The Leadership Series' website for more information on what Mary is up to:
from unintended destruction during development, so-called “archaeological disasters” continue to occur
throughout the United States. Two particularly high-profile disasters have occurred in Washington State,
first in 1999 on the Semiahmoo Spit in Blaine and again in 2003 in Port Angeles.
disaster and subsequently struggling to apply the legislative matrix to protect cultural resources, Mary Rossi
co-founded a nonprofit program, APT-Applied Preservation Technologies, in an effort to prevent
archaeological disasters through effective collaboration, planning, and education.
coordination of pre-project archaeological assessments triggered, in many instances, by the legislative
matrix. However, after several years of engaging in the CRM system, APT has identified a number of areas
critical to the system’s success yet often under-addressed: policy planning, legislative advocacy, and
education/training. Join APT in a discussion about how such gaps can be plugged and how the same might
be done in British Columbia.