Abstract Manager

The Flathead Maritime Archaeology Project (FMAP) is a maritime archaeology and community capacity building program focusing on underwater cultural heritage exploration of Flathead Lake, Montana, USA.  In the summer of 2024, FMAP project leaders brought subject matter experts in marine archaeology and underwater acoustics to conduct field operations in Flathead Lake and its tributary, the Flathead River.  This presentation presents the summer 2024 field campaign as a case study in capacity building for supporting effective stakeholder communication in activities related to Indigenous Cultural Heritage Management initiatives. Through a series of discussions and community engagement events involving both Indigenous and non-Indigenous community residents prior to field operations, FMAP project participants provided substantive technical insights on the equipment and the methods used to acquire non-disturbance acoustic imagery of the lakebed and possible submerged cultural sites.   

Located about 3 kilometers north of Flathead Lake on the Flathead River, the Holt Crossing Bridge was a steel bridge on masonry piers built in 1942 and decommissioned and the bridge deck removed in 1955.  As part of the summer 2024 field operations, the submerged pier ruins were investigated with multibeam sonar bathymetry and side scan sonar imagery, providing data about a locally significant underwater cultural heritage site related to transportation networks that, crucially, is not of Indigenous origin.  FMAP project members and community residents could thus use the Holt Crossing dataset to demonstrate what kinds of cultural heritage information can be obtained using bathymetric and imaging sonars while respecting the privacy and data sovereignty of Indigenous stakeholders. Our goals are for Indigenous community members to understand what acquiring and interpreting sonar data entails, to develop awareness of different sonar data products created for use cases in addition to cultural heritage investigations, such as design phase surveys or underwater bridge foundation inspections, and to understand how they can use sonar data and interpreted products to advocate for Cultural Heritage Management programs that are aligned with their own interests.