ABSTRACT
The South Carolina Heritage Trust Program of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) was formed more than thirty years ago by landmark legislation in 1976 when Governor John C. West formed the Heritage Trust Advisory Board by executive order. At the time, South Carolina was the first state in the United States to establish a programme to protect its cultural and natural sites by acquiring properties and establishing a system of Heritage Preserves. Chronology and Heritage were a method of balancing the differences between rating historic and prehistoric sites. Recent efforts to re-evaluate and update the criteria for cultural site selection by Heritage Trust Program were unsuccessful due to a lack of consensus by archaeologists on two key points: how to go about the process and the variables to include in such an endeavour. The Governor of South Carolina and the powers that be within the Department of Natural Resources have made land acquisition/protection a top priority.
