08/31/2026
The board of directors of the Illinois Association for Advancement of Archaeology (IAAA) would like to express its serious concerns with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation's proposed revisions to 36 CFR Part 800, the regulations implementing Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA).
The proposed revisions work directly against the stated purposes of our organization, as laid out in our constitution, which include the preservation of archaeological sites and artifacts, assisting the Illinois State Historic Preservation Office and other agencies with the documentation and protection of archaeological sites, and the encouragement of a constructive public attitude toward archaeology in the State of Illinois.
The IAAA board is particularly concerned that the proposed changes would:
1) Shift decision-making authority away from a collaborative review process that considers the views of the public. Early and active consultation with a variety of stakeholders has been the cornerstone of the Section 106 process for nearly 60 years, and IAAA chapters have served as consulting parties during past reviews. With these proposed changes, preservation organizations and interested members of the public would no longer be recognized as consulting parties.
The IAAA is unique in that it brings together avocational and professional archaeologists, unifying many diverse advocates dedicated to staying informed about, promoting, and preserving the rich archaeological heritage of our state. Eliminating consultation with groups like these will almost guarantee that the voices of everyday people interested in our collective past will go unheard.
2) Reduce meaningful consultation with State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPOs), Tribal Historic Preservation Offices (THPOs), and Tribal Nations. Over the past decades, the Illinois SHPO has been a tremendous resource for archaeologists, developers, contractors, and other government agencies, helping guide those involved to the best possible conclusions. In addition to being contrary to law, limiting SHPO involvement will only serve to make these reviews more difficult, confusing, and costly for everyone.
These rule changes could also cut Tribal partners out of much of the decision-making process. This directly challenges the Tribal sovereignty of Native peoples such as the Prairie Band Potawatomi, with land holdings in DeKalb County, Illinois. It could also impact more than 30 other federally recognized Tribes with deep historical—and in some cases ancestral—ties to our state.
3) Reduce the number of sites in Illinois that are protected, preserved, and studied. The proposed revisions further narrow the definition of historic properties and limit how potential effects on historic properties are evaluated. For instance, adverse visual and other so-called “indirect” effects on places like our state’s many historic downtown and Main Street districts will no longer be considered. Broad categories of projects will be excluded from all historic and archaeological review; this puts historically, and in some cases, spiritually, significant places and resources under direct threat of inadvertent disturbance. This places resources such as burial mounds, pioneer cemeteries, and large archaeological sites that have yet to be identified in danger of irreparable damage or permanent eradication.
At least 90% of all archaeology in the United States is conducted as part of the Section 106 process and/or to satisfy similar state-, city-, or county-level cultural resource review requirements. In Illinois, this process has produced a vast corpus of publicly available archaeological literature, including roughly 100 volumes published by the Illinois State Archaeological Survey (and its previous iterations) alone over the past 45 years. Without the National Historic Preservation Act, none of these invaluable works about our state’s past would exist.
4) Lead to ballooning costs to taxpayers, project delays, and negative publicity due to the likelihood that unresolved concerns will emerge later in project development. The financial costs of archaeological review for federal projects are minuscule; even the Institute for Progress, an anti-regulation think tank that appears to have helped draft the proposed ACHP regulations, seems to concede in its research that the direct costs of the average Section 106 review are not typically very substantial. The lack of review, by contrast, can have devastating direct and indirect effects on project costs, extend project timelines, and dramatically increase business risk. A robust Section 106 process helps prevent the kind of incidents, such as the disturbance of human remains during a construction project that was not subject to compliance review, that can trigger these ballooning costs, not to mention cause irreparable reputational damage to responsible agencies as well as developers and contractors.
Board Position Statement
The IAAA board believes that archaeological sites, historic buildings, cultural landscapes, and places of historical religious and cultural significance are nonrenewable resources. Once lost, they cannot be replaced. That is why our constitution states that one of our primary purposes as an organization is to “promote the preservation of archaeological sites and artifacts by all appropriate means.”
We do not believe that the proposed ACHP revisions align with this, or any of our other organizational goals. For six decades, the Section 106 process has successfully balanced responsible infrastructure development with the preservation of our shared heritage through collaboration, transparency, and meaningful consultation. The IAAA’s board of directors respectfully urges the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation to reconsider these proposed revisions and preserve the core consultative principles that have made Section 106 one of our nation's most effective and enduring historic preservation programs. While we support efforts to improve efficiency, those should not come at the expense of meaningful consultation, stewardship, and the protection of our nation’s and state’s irreplaceable archaeological and historic resources.
Chapters and Individual members, please consider making your voice heard on this issue by writing a letter to your federal representative and/or a comment on IAAA’s social media pages. Once the 30-day public comment window opens, we hope you will consider submitting a formal comment as well. At that time, we will post additional information about how to do so.
