PaleoWest buys Commonwealth Heritage Group: a transformation for Cultural Resource Management and commercial archaeology in the United States?

Abstract

PaleoWest, one of the largest Cultural Resource Management (CRM) companies in the United States has bought one of their major competitors, Commonwealth Heritage Group. This means that PaleoWest is probably now the largest commercial firm working in archaeology in North America. This has in turn been driven by PaleoWest themselves having been recently acquired by Riverside Company, a global private investment group (venture capitalists). This is a significant transformation for the sector, a tipping point where major outside investors consider that the best of CRM companies can be seen as having the potential to grow and be profitable.