02-10-1997 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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INVESTIGATION PREMISES AND METHODOLOGY The purpose of this investigation was to document all archeological properties within the project area at the Phase I level of investigation. The goals of the Phase I survey are based on the Secretary of the Interior ’s standards and guidelines for identification of archeological properties (National Park Service [NPS] 1983:44720-44723). According to these guidelines, Phase I sur\'eys are intended to provide basic data on the occurrence, location, and identity of cultural resources within a given area. Investigation Premises The sun'ey strategy of this Phase I investigation was based on an analysis of the project area and the landforms within it. Because geological processes determine the geographic and pedologic character of a region, understanding an area’s geologic history is crucial to any evaluation of the archeological record. Landform and soil characteristics have a strong influence on the presence and distribution of the plant and animal communities used by human populations. Geological processes not only affect the patterns of human settlement, but are also largely responsible for the preservation or destruction of the archeological record. Thus, the archeological record can be viewed as a product of both cultural and geological processes (Bettis and Green 1991). Because archeological sites are incorporated into the environment by natural formation processes, they may be viewed not only as cultural remains but also as geologic deposits. This perspective on the locations of sites allows the investigator to create predictive models of archeological site occurrence and patterned distribution within a given area, relative to the existing landforms within that area (cf. Bettis and Benn 1984; Bettis and Thompson 1981). Such an approach also proves useful in investigator recognition of made land, plowzones (.4p horizons), and other disturbances that may have modified the area under investigation. This type of landform modeling, as a tool of cultural resource management, is crucial to the development of sur\ey strategies. More sensitive strategies allow the investigator to focus on those areas where the probabilities of site occurrence are highest, thereby reducing or eliminating the costs of suiveying those areas where sites w-ould not logically occur such as made land, heavily disturbed areas, and alluvial landforms consisting entirely of recent alluvium. Within those areas of focused investigation, informed strategies allow the determination of the depth of and distribution of subsurface tests necessary' for the location of buried cultural resource deposits. Additionally, the nature of the proposed impacts can be assessed in terms of the landforms present. Although developed for Iowa, Ruhe’s (1969) landform model, concerning hillslope evolution, is applicable to the project area. Ruhe’s (1969) analysis of hillslope evolution details the erosional and depositional sequences on the components of upland landforms. These upland landform components are used to focus the field investigation on those I , 1 I I I I I