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National Historic Landmarks Program


The following information should be provided in order to demonstrate how a property illustrates nationally significant information and to make a compelling argument for NHL designation for your archeological property.

Outlining Section 8:

• Begin with a summary introductory statement. Include a discussion of the NHL criteria and related NHL themes. Provide an overview of the national significance of the property. This should be done in a few paragraphs.

• Discuss the national historic and archeological context of the property. The context will include a body of thematically, geographically, and temporally linked information; this is the analytical framework within which the property's importance can be understood and to which archeological investigations are likely to contribute important information.

• Directly relate your property to NHL Criterion 6. Provide information about the research agenda, demonstrating how this research agenda discusses nationally significant information. Include a discussion of the archeological literature that shows how this property provides a major contribution to the field.

• Discuss the related NHL theme and compare your property to other properties of this type or similar properties to establish how your property provides nationally significant information.

• Write a concluding paragraph.

Click here for an example of Section 8/archeological importance using this property.

Meadowcroft Rockshelter, PA: Meadowcroft Rockshelter demonstrates that humans have been in the Americas since at least 16,000 years before today, increasing the known period of human occupation of the New World by approximately 25 percent. The site was periodically utilized and reoccupied from the earliest Paleo-Indian times through the Archaic and Woodland Periods by Native American peoples, and during the Historic Period by Euro-Americans. It has provided one of the longest, if not the actual longest, stratified sequence of cultures in the United States. It has provided information about the earliest migrants into the eastern United States and evidence for some of the earliest domesticated crops in the northeastern United States.