ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the implications of the theoretical issues developed in the preceding three chapters, and illustrates how CRM and the discourse of archaeological theory intersect. It also provides an example of how the disciplinary attributes that facilitate the mobilization of archaeology as a technology of government are articulated within CRM. The chapter deals explicitly with the 1970s and 1980s literature concerned with the definition and development of the concept of archaeological ‘significance’, a term that had, and continues to hold, a central role in Australian and American CRM practice and policy. It is argued that ideas about archaeological ‘significance’ developed in these decades are underpinned by processual theory, and that it was the discourse of archaeological significance that explicitly facilitated the development of archaeology as a technology of government within CRM during this time.
