A quick search on antonyms for “creative” yields obvious results such as “uncreative,” “unimaginative,” and “uninspired,” but also terms such as “dull,” “derivative,” and “stodgy.” In the world of cultural resources and mitigation of adverse effects, “creative” is most often opposed to “standard.” That sounds like a good thing, right? Good old, reliable, dependable, predictable standard mitigation. But as we will see from the articles in this special issue, remarkable things can happen when those designing mitigation programs replace or augment “standard” approaches. What is it about a mitigation measure or program that leads us to term it “creative”? How can we expand those defining qualities of creative mitigation measures and programs to enhance the quality of standard mitigation approaches? How can we make the standard approaches, if not creative, at least not stodgy?

Mitigation of adverse impacts to archaeological resources within cultural resource management (CRM) is commonly achieved through a data recovery plan. Under this venue, the primary significance of a given site is its evaluation under NRHP Criterion D—its information potential. Rarely is consideration given to the emotional, psychological, and spiritual values descendant Native American communities attribute to these places in relation to their importance under other criteria. The associative relationships and integrity of traditional religious and cultural practices connected to sites are often overlooked because the identification of significance and values of archaeological sites is defined by Euro-American intellectual and value-laden frameworks. Even if one claims “scientific objectivity” as one's guiding principle, implementation of such practices without regard for Native American perspectives are clear violations of NHPA mandates. Balanced design of mitigation measures is seriously lacking from CRM practice, resulting in descendant communities being continually disenfranchised through the silencing of their voice in the management of their own heritage and inheritance. This article examines this issue from the perspective of the Pueblo of Zuni and how Zuni successfully worked with the Bureau of Reclamation to design a strategy for resolving adverse effects that is meaningful and beneficial to the Zuni.

The last 20 years mark a period of transformation from a traditional model of displaying archaeology to a more immersive model supported by digital and virtual media. The traditional model has generally used glass cases accompanied by extensive texts to inform visitors, whereas the immersive model employs digital media, tablets, virtual reality, and augmented reality to attract and engage a wide audience. In light of the recent enthusiasm for the latter, however, one must ask whether such immersive exhibitions are merely superficial means to make public institutions more attractive without having a meaningful impact on audience engagement. Polish archaeological museums provide interesting sites through which to explore this predicament. Here, digital upgrades are generously financed by national funds, so the traditional model of the archaeological museum in Poland is currently almost absent. In this short review, I aim to discuss one of the most interesting examples of temporary digital archaeological exhibitions organized between 2014 and 2019 in the Polish capital of Warsaw. I investigate its potential to engage audiences, ultimately concluding that it managed to create an interesting counterweight to traditional displays and respond to the drawbacks of new digital exhibitions through novel aesthetics and alternative archaeological storytelling.

Standard mitigation treatment for adverse effects to significant cultural resources has historically been a combination of data recovery excavation along with artifact analysis, reporting, and curation, whose purpose is to move the undertaking forward. Over the past several decades, there has been increased interest and understanding of alternative, or creative, mitigation options in these situations, which may, in the end, be the best option for the resource and more meaningful to both project stakeholders and the public. This article, the first in this special issue on creative mitigation, introduces the regulatory and conceptual framework for creative mitigation and weaves themes introduced in subsequent articles in this issue.

In the 54 years since passage of the National Historic Preservation Act, more than 56 million ha of land have been surveyed in the United States, and nearly one million cultural resources have been identified and recorded. These efforts have produced hundreds of thousands of project reports, vast collections of data, and a wealth of descriptive information about the past. The accumulated data can be used to generate important new knowledge about the past, with many scientific and management implications, but remain largely untapped. Following current approaches, many resources will be damaged or lost before effective strategies for studying or preserving them can be developed. Synthesis and modeling are needed in creative mitigation efforts to identify which resources to preserve and study and how best to do so with limited time and funding. This article explores the potential for compiling and synthesizing large cultural and environmental datasets within a geographic information system to model the nature and distribution of cultural resources. It is argued that dedicated synthesis and modeling of cultural resource management data will allow development of more effective and proactive research and management strategies, providing lasting benefit to diverse scientific and traditional communities and the public.

The alternative mitigation program that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) established in 2008 to address impacts to the archaeological resources in the Permian Basin of southeastern New Mexico, now one of the most active of the nation's oil and gas energy fields, has supported more than $10 million in field research programs and is poised to be able to fund about $1 million in field research annually for the foreseeable future. The financial success of the program is mirrored by the program's outstanding contributions to our understanding of the Permian Basin's long and complex history of human occupation. Surprisingly, although other public lands under the auspices of the BLM are seeing similar rates of energy development, the critical elements of this program have not been picked up elsewhere in the BLM. The Permian Basin program appears doomed to be an example of a “one-off” alternative mitigation solution. The factors barring more widespread adoption include the ebb and flow of energy production activity, complications arising from mixed land status and the ability to work across jurisdictional boundaries, hesitation to change procedures that are working adequately for the time being, and a lack of capacity to institute systemic change.

Public Archaeology in the Mediterranean Context (#pubarchMED) is a project that focuses on the management of archaeological heritage in the Mediterranean context from the perspective of public archaeology. Ranging from fully public models where preventive archaeology itself is a challenge to mixed models where the outsourcing of this work has been accomplished to a full extent, the variety of solutions is wide and with a common trend: struggle with mitigation and little space for creativity. This article will delve into the range of models that exist in the Mediterranean, exploring the way they approach, first of all, preventive/rescue archaeology, and then, the relationship between archaeology and society in the process. Building on the challenges of an underfunded scheme for an extremely archaeologically rich territory, different solutions have been set in practice—in some cases, under the auspices of competent administrations in the form of public policy—in the endeavor to include public archaeology in the practice, mostly encouraged by professionals as a personal or corporate initiative, and sometimes even consciously avoided. The discussion will offer some ideas for creative mitigation in the different scenarios, built on the comparative study and the broad possibilities to engage stakeholders positively in the process.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration are undertaking a long-term, multiphase project to improve and rebuild Interstate 95 (I-95) in Pennsylvania, within the historic city of Philadelphia. Given the complex urban setting, the archaeological subsurface testing for the I-95 Girard Avenue Interchange Improvement Project is being guided by a programmatic agreement under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act and a categorical exclusion under the National Environmental Policy Act. Through data-recovery excavations, the contractor for the project, AECOM, has documented 30 historical-period and Native American archaeological sites. The project includes its own professional journal, live interactive reporting, and a public archaeology center.

This article discusses recent trends in archaeological and historic preservation practices in Albania that are leading to new and innovative approaches to what is often termed “mitigation.” To understand this in an Albanian context, it is necessary to review the historical, political, and social context that has shaped the stand of this postcommunist society toward its past as well as the role that this context plays in heritage practices today. I argue that the nationalistic approach toward heritage as a key component of “nation building” in the twentieth century still resonates strongly in the current discourse. This review leads to the conclusion that standard mitigation based on avoidance, recovery/excavation, and documentation phases is the most dominant practice. Experience has shown that this is not always effective in the harmonization of conflicting interests. Public-private benefits, definition of values and significance associated with historic properties, and costs of requested mitigations have all made it clear in the last decade that alternative solutions must be found, even within the rigid boundaries of the existing legal framework. The concept of “creative mitigation” is emerging as a logical need in the practice of historic preservation.

Archaeologists have struggled to combine remotely sensed datasets with preexisting information for landscape-level analyses. In the American Southeast, for example, analyses of lidar data using automated feature extraction algorithms have led to the identification of over 40 potential new pre-European-contact Native American shell ring deposits in Beaufort County, South Carolina. Such datasets are vital for understanding settlement distributions, yet a comprehensive assessment requires remotely sensed and previously surveyed archaeological data. Here, we use legacy data and airborne lidar-derived information to conduct a series of point pattern analyses using spatial models that we designed to assess the factors that best explain the location of shell rings. The results reveal that ring deposit locations are highly clustered and best explained through a combination of environmental conditions such as distance to water and elevation as well as social factors.

Archaeologists have a responsibility to use their research to engage people and provide opportunities for the public to interact with cultural heritage and interpret it on their own terms. This can be done through hypermedia and deep mapping as approaches to public archaeology. In twenty-first-century archaeology, scholars can rely on vastly improved technologies to aid them in these efforts toward public engagement, including digital photography, geographic information systems, and three-dimensional models. These technologies, even when collected for analysis or documentation, can be valuable tools for educating and involving the public with archaeological methods and how these methods help archaeologists learn about the past. Ultimately, academic storytelling can benefit from making archaeological results and methods accessible and engaging for stakeholders and the general public. ArcGIS StoryMaps is an effective tool for integrating digital datasets into an accessible framework that is suitable for interactive public engagement. This article describes the benefits of using ArcGIS StoryMaps for hypermedia and deep mapping–based public engagement using the story of copper production in Iron Age Faynan, Jordan, as a case study.

For historic property types such as archaeological sites and historic buildings, data recovery is often the main part of mitigation plans offered by federal agencies with undertakings that will destroy part or all of a cultural resource. In theory, by extracting important information before destruction, we recover some part of a historic resource's cultural value. In some situations, however, data recovery is impossible or otherwise undesirable, and “creative” or off-site mitigation measures are necessary to mitigate adverse effects. In such circumstances, the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation has accepted funding from federal agencies to create, implement, and enhance an online digital information system for cultural resources. This article describes the Washington Information System for Architectural and Archaeological Records Data (WISAARD) and provides an example of a federal agency funding WISAARD development as creative mitigation for the transfer of archaeological sites out of federal ownership. We discuss the benefits of such systems and address how their development meets preservation goals established by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.

Financial institutions typically avoid projects that will have a significant adverse effect on cultural heritage because it creates unwelcome risk and can affect their reputation. For bank clients, adverse project effects on cultural heritage can result in reputation risk, impede access to finance and insurance, increase operational costs, and jeopardize on-time and on-budget delivery of projects. To address this risk, financial institutions implement environmental and social policy frameworks that include specific requirements for the consideration of cultural heritage. This article examines the place of cultural heritage in the lending practices of 25 of the world's largest private-sector banks and its relevance for heritage practitioners who may be retained to provide advice, review or undertake fieldwork, and prepare studies in keeping with the private-sector bank policies and external standards described. The article concludes with a recommended best practice for private-sector financial institutions, a call to action for heritage practitioners to advocate for robust safeguards, and a call for support of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals by both heritage practitioners and private-sector financial institutions.

Managing collections means ensuring that the data about them are useful, available, and accurate. In addition to the technical aspects of data management, there are layers of political and social structure that direct the construction and use of collections data. The Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) employs a set of data standards that allows us to gather electronic cataloging data from a wide community of archaeology researchers who are depositing collections at our institution. Though met with initial resistance, these standards have facilitated publication in Open Context as linked open data. Furthermore, institutional discussions concerning Creative Commons licensing and the cultural sensitivity of collections data were precipitated by publication, highlighting the role of social agreement in data management. We found that successful employment of data standards must take into account the needs of the various stakeholders and further their interests. Standards will be most useful and successful when they are lightweight, are supported by training and documentation, and exist as part of a system that allows for more than one way to characterize the collections.

The methodical recording and representation of spatial data are central to archaeological fieldwork and research. Until recently, centimeter-level precise geolocation equipment was the exclusive domain of researchers who could afford setups costing tens of thousands of dollars. However, high-quality measurements are being made more accessible by rapidly evolving technologies. These new tools, when used together with mobile technology for efficiently recording field data, open up the possibility of capturing the precise location of every find during an archaeological surface survey. An important step in reaching the desired outcome—centimeter-level recording for all—is experimentation with a variety of emerging low-cost setups. Accordingly, we tested the Reach and Reach RS, differential global navigation satellite systems (dGNSS) equipment produced by the company Emlid, during a surface survey in Armenia in June 2018. Our field application demonstrates that the use of dGNSS is already possible and that the described advances in precision enable improved recording and representation of spatial data.

Advanced 2-D and 3-D computer visualizations are increasingly being used for recording and documentation, analysis, dissemination, and public engagement purposes. Recent technological advances not only considerably improve data acquisition, processing, and analysis but also enable easy and efficient online presentation. This article evaluates the contributions of advanced 2-D and 3-D computer visualization and discusses the potential of 3-D modeling for recording basketry technology and documenting the state of preservation of baskets. It explores the available analysis, integration, and online dissemination tools, using as case studies recently excavated baskets from Cache Cave in southern California. Results indicate that the proposed methodology, which incorporates reflectance transformation imaging visualizations and photogrammetric 3-D models, which are further processed using 3-D modeling software and integrated analysis tools and then transformed to a Web-based format, is a useful addition to the basketry analysis toolkit.

Although archaeology has become increasingly concerned with engaging diverse publics, and has embraced the internet as a means of facilitating such engagement, attitudes towards Wikipedia have—understandably—been more ambivalent. Nevertheless, we argue here, Wikipedia's popularity and reach mean that archaeologists should actively engage with the website by adding and improving archaeological content. One way to do this is in the classroom: this paper provides a detailed how-to for instructors interested in having students create new Wikipedia content. We provide a case study in Wikipedia engagement from an advanced undergraduate course on African Archaeology, assess a program (Wiki Education) designed to help, and suggest further avenues for future outreach. We conclude that Wikipedia's utopian mission aligns with many of the goals of public archaeology, and argue that archaeology has much to gain by engaging with—rather than ignoring or even shunning—Wikipedia.

Recently declassified photographs taken by U2 spy planes in the 1950s and 1960s provide an important new source of historical aerial imagery useful for Eurasian archaeology. Like other sources of historical imagery, U2 photos provide a window into the past, before modern agriculture and development destroyed many archaeological sites. U2 imagery is older and in many cases higher resolution than CORONA spy satellite imagery, the other major source of historical imagery for Eurasia, and thus can expand the range of archaeological sites and features that can be studied from an aerial perspective. However, there are significant barriers to finding and retrieving U2 imagery of particular locales, and archaeologists have thus not yet widely used it. In this article, we aim to reduce these barriers by describing the U2 photo dataset and how to access it. We also provide the first spatial index of U2 photos for the Middle East. A brief discussion of archaeological case studies drawn from U2 imagery illustrates its merits and limitations. These case studies include investigations of prehistoric mass-kill hunting traps in eastern Jordan, irrigation systems of the first millennium BC Neo-Assyrian Empire in northern Iraq, and twentieth-century marsh communities in southern Iraq.

Quantitative analyses of how the past and archaeological professionals are being depicted in, for example, exhibitions and popular books offer valuable—and sometimes confronting—insights about how presentation practices continue to reflect gender stereotypes. It turns out that very often archaeology and the archaeological past are still almost exclusively associated with males and masculine activities. This, of course, distorts the truth about what actually happened in past societies. It also raises the questions of whether or not such biases have an influence on public participation in archaeology and if they may hinder the sector's ambition to foster inclusivity. In this article, we will share some of the preliminary results of an ongoing systematic evaluation of presentation practice in Dutch archaeology and on the public perception of gender stereotypes in the past.

Oxtotitlán Cave paintings have been considered among the earliest in Mesoamerica on stylistic grounds, but confirmation of this hypothesis through absolute dating has not been attempted until now. We describe the application of advanced radiocarbon strategies developed for situations such as caves with high carbon backgrounds. Using a low-temperature plasma oxidation system, we dated both the ancient paint and the biogenic rock coatings that cover the paint layers at Oxtotitlán. Our research has significantly expanded the time frame for the production of polychrome rock paintings encompassing the Early Formative and Late Formative/Early Classic periods, statistically spanning a long era from before ca. 1500 cal B.C. to cal A.D. 600.