Sensitive Archaeological Sites

[+briansnat]

Moderator's Note: This topic was split off from another topic discussing how to get a cache archived. The topic took a turn towards discussing sensitive archaelogical sites, beginning with this post from BrianSnat. As there is some good knowledge in these posts, I moved them to their own topic.

ORIGINAL POST:

 

I saw your note on the other one. Does it happen to be a petroglyph site and if it is, is it really all that fragile?

 

I have a petroglyph cache in the planning stages and have no qualms about placing it. It's an interesting spot that is torn apart by ATVers, so I don't see a few visitors causing any more damage that which has already been done by the local teens.

Edited February 5, 2004 by Keystone Approver

[Bobthearch]

It is much more fragile than an ordinary petroglyph site, and it has never been vandalized. As a professional archaeologist, this is one of the most fragile arch. sites I've come accross.

 

When trying to find out what to do months ago, I asked at these forums and followed the advice. That was after attempting to e-mail the owner.

 

You know Geocaching has a policy regarding caches at archaeological sites. Technically and legally, an arch site is remnants of human occupation over 50 years old. I don't think that an abandoned 1954 Chevy in the woods shouldn't be a cache site, but technically...

 

Any reference to ruins or rock art have been removed from the latest editions of USGS topo maps, just to show how serious the problem of vandalism and over-visitation is in the Southwest. Rock Art already part of an advertised park, such as the Pertoglyph National Monument, should be OK. But being a Monument, it would have to be a Virtual.

 

-Bob

Edited February 5, 2004 by Bobthearch

[+briansnat]

You were there and I wasn't so I defer to your knowledge of the site. I'd do another "archive this cache" and follow it with an e-mail to the website...or maybe directly to Hydee.

Edited February 5, 2004 by briansnat

[+briansnat]

I'm aware of the problems with the petroglyph sites, mostly in the soutwest. But some are quite fragile and others aren't. Of course most are susceptible to vandalism, but I don't see the geocaching community having a lot of vandals.

 

Technically and legally, an arch site is remnants of human occupation over 50 years old. I don't think that an abandoned 1954 Chevy in the woods shouldn't be a cache site, but technically...

 

So maybe we shouldn't be CITO'ing those old Schaefer beer cans with the punch tops

Edited February 5, 2004 by briansnat

[Bobthearch]

Had some difficulty with a camp staff member once who had "cleaned up trash" from a historic logging town. He had to put it all back!

 

It's sad how quickly historic and prehistoric artifacts "walk away" from public lands...

 

-Bob

[+briansnat]

It's sad how quickly historic and prehistoric artifacts "walk away" from public lands..

 

True. Too many people who want to buy the stuff and too many pot hunters to dig 'em up and sell them. Did save these though. I know they're not of much value to anyone but archaeologists and a few point collectors though, which is probably why they were still around.

 

Edited February 5, 2004 by briansnat

[Bobthearch]

Interesting about that. Often projectile points are the only diagnostic artifacts at an archaeological site. Once the datable items are removied, the site loses all meaning and research potential.

 

Take for example a scatter of stone-tool artifacts found in the path of a proposed pipeline. Since the proposed pipeline is on public land or requires a state/federal permit, an archeological survey is required. That's where I come in - so I survey the path and find the artifact scatter.

 

If all I see is non-datable stone debris, the site has little meaning and further study of the site is useless. But if I can find a datable/diagnostic artifact, such as a projectile point or pottery sherd, the site could have tremendous scientific value. Additional analysis of even the most crappy debris suddenly is worthwhile because the information gained can be applied to particular cultural group or time period. They might even re-route the pipeline around the site.

 

Additionally, it is totally illegal to collect artifacts from public lands. Land agencies love to make an example of the few people they can catch. If they were collected from private land, it's perfectly legal as long as you had the landowner's permission.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

About the beer cans, I guess it all comes down to ownership and context. Personally, if I found 50-year-old beer cans on my land scattered along a highway, I would throw them in the dumpster. If the same type cans are found on BLM land, it would be illegal to disturb them. Historic coyboy, logger, miner, or hunter campsites are an important component to the archaeology and history of the southwest.

 

Best Wishes,

Bob

[+Renegade Knight]

...Technically and legally, an arch site is remnants of human occupation over 50 years old. I don't think that an abandoned 1954 Chevy in the woods shouldn't be a cache site, but technically...

That's not literally true. 50 years is nothing more than a cut off for what might qualify. Newer than 50 years and it has to be something truly remarkable to be considered, older than 50 years and like you pointed out, it can't be a 54 chevy unless that particular 54 chevy was special in some way.

 

While you may be an archaeologist and you may have the knowlede, you may very well not have the authority to make the call.

 

I'll go on to say that I think it's too bad they are revising the quad maps. It's my right to check out the land, petroglyphs and the like as time permits. While secrecy works to protect these resources, banning people in general from these sites would quickly lose my support for them. In short if something is protected from the people instead of for the people it might as well not exist in my world and as such deserves no protection, no money, and no effort. In that case there are better things to spend my governments efforts on. Things like removing rivers from concrete boxes and into a more natural and healthy streambed complete with banks, parks, and riparian areas.

[+archaeor]

As a professional archaeologist, myself, I guess I'll chime in here. All archaeological sites on public lands are protected by law as 'non-renewable' resources. Once they are destroyed, vandalized, pot-hunted, altered in any way, or even excavated by archaeologists, they can't be put back and potential important information could be lost.

 

The "50 year-old or older" is just one of many guideline criterium that the law uses to define whether or not an archaeological resource is eligible for protection under the law. Other criteria include: The resource is associated with people or events important in understanding history; is likely to yield information important to answering scientific questions regarding history; is the oldest, or best, example of it's type; etc., etc.

 

It is the role of a qualified archaeologist to understand the law and determine the significance of an archaeological resource in order to recommend how a particular resource should be treated.

 

For example, if that '54 Chevy is a rotting hulk down in a ditch, it's probably not archaeologically significant enough to warrant treatment or preservation. But if it were to be discovered that it was the car that some important person crashed and died in, then it might qualify as a significant archaeological resource under the law.

 

Case in point . . . during archaeological excavations at the Stahl Site near Little Lake, Ca., we discovered the burnt and rusted remains of an old '40s Ford Woody. This car belonged to the deceased archaeologist (J.P. Harrington) who excavated the same site over fifty years earlier. He clearly describes in his log how his Woody somehow caught on fire and burned, so he had to walk out. Mr. Harrington was an early, important California archaeologist (a little eccentric, but important), so we recorded his old Woody as an archaeological resource.

 

Preservation is always the preferred method of lessening any potential damaging impacts to an archaeological site. Sometimes, the best action in order to protect a significant resource from damage is to keep the location of the resource hidden from the public.

 

All petroglyph sites on public lands will probably qualify as significant, under the law. And, my experience has been, that for whatever reason, some folks, especially hunters and 'plinkers' like to use them as targets during target practice.

 

Even seemingly responsible persons can unknowingly (or stupidly) damage rock art sites. For the movie "The Doors" with Val Kilmer (an excellent movie, BTW) the producers contracted with the NPS at Joshua Tree National Monument in California to use a cave with petroglyphs and pictographs for a scene in the movie. Unfortunately, the rock art didn't show up well while they were filming the scene, so they "enhanced" the rock art with spray paint!! Which, of course, ended up in a heavy fine for the movie company, and irrepairable damage to the resource. They also had to pay to have the rock art "cleaned", but there wasn't much they could do to repair the damage.

 

Now, I'm not about to suggest in any way that any geocacher would be so irresponsible so as to knowingly cause damage to an archaeological resource, (and I know I'm streching it here), but if some crazy 'plinker' with a passion for using petroglyphs as targets were to do a Google search for "petroglyph" and were pointed to the geocache.com page because that word was in the description of a recent cache, the exact location of that resource (within 3 meters, of course) would be available to them.

 

Just more "food for thought". We now return you to your regularly scheduled geocache forum.

 

Rick

 

edited for typos and content.

Edited February 5, 2004 by archaeor

[Bobthearch]

Can someone also move my reply over here too? I got caught in the warp...

 

-Bob

[+carleenp]

Bob, I can't move it, but I'll quote it for you If a moderator wants to replace this with your actual reply, that is fine with me.

 

From Bobthearch:

 

Doing archaeological surveys, 50 years is a strict cut-off, no judgement involved. If there's a GLO survey marker from 1955, we don't record it. If the date is 1953 we do. 50 years...

 

In my opinion, they need to come up with a cut-off date, rather than an age. There's just too much 50s and 60s junk. Pretty soon we'll be recording trailer park pads as archaeological sites. I'd personally choose WWII as a cut-off. Post WWII stuff is so common, and so mass produced, and so well documented, that there's very little research interest or potential.

 

There are newer places of obvious historic interest, and places newer than 50 years old can be added to the National Register of Historic Places. That's not the same as an "archaeological site."

 

Just because sites aren't on maps, you aren't banned from visiting. You can still go there, they just don't advertise the locations publicly. You apparantly have no idea the amount and severity of vandalism and theft on public lands. Fossil-thieves and cave-defacers are also serious problems.

 

You might also be interested to know that the locations of archaeological sites are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. Meaning you can't go to the B.L.M. and demand to see archaeological records, or any goverment records that show precise site locations. Caves have similar protection I think. Archaeological firms, such as where I work, often publish two versions of the same report, a full report with detailed location info that goes to the state and other government agencies, and one without specific site or artifact locations that can be released to the general public.

 

Since your interest appears to be nature preservation, I bet you wouldn't want thousands of people trampling cryptogramic soil or fragile riparian areas. That could happen if specific fragile natural were labeled as such on public maps.

 

There's a similar re-occuring conversation that goes on in outdoor communities. Does advertising a great hiking spot, say by writing a Backpacker article, bring in so many people that the area is ruined? Or does it help protect the location by bringing attention to potential threats? Fortunately there are significantly fewer geocachers than readers of Backpacker and our impact is proportionately less.

 

It's not a question that will be easily answered on these forums. But what we can do is follow the established Geocaching guidlines, which prohibit placing caches at archaeological sites or in fragile environmental areas.

 

The problem is that some people, the type of people unlikely to be Geocachers, get "public" land confused with "their" land. Conversely, archaeological sites on private property are Not protected. If you have an arch site on your property, you can dig it up, bulldoze it, leave it alone, whatever. The only exception is that burials are protected on private land - via. the Unmarked Graves Protection Act, and another law meant to protect historic cemeteries that can also be applied to prehistoric burials.

 

Thanks for listening. Nothing but good wishes,

-Bob

Edited February 5, 2004 by carleenp

[Bobthearch]

Thanks. I guess I could have done that myself. Wheh, I'm glad I found this topic, I thought I was going crazy when all of the posts dissappeared from the other topic in mid-post.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Archaor,

 

The "50 year-old or older" is just one of many guideline criterium that the law uses to define whether or not an archaeological resource is eligible for protection under the law.

 

Yes, but it's more than that too. It determines which resources are recorded as "archaeological" sites, without regard to protection or significance. Almost exlusively I conduct archaeological surveys, in which anything over 50 years old is recorded.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Renegade Knight,

 

I should clarify something I said earlier, a single item such as a GLO marker or an abandoned car would not actually be an "archaeological site," at least here. We would call those "IO"s, or Isolated Occurrances. They would be entered into the archaeological records, but not actually called "sites." And the definition of "site" varies from place to place.

 

You might be interested to hear that a single flake found in a shovel test in Arkansas is a "site." In Oklahoma they require two flakes to be a site. It even varies from agency to agency, for instance the BLM site definition here in NM is different than the Forest Service definitions, which also vary from forest to forest.

 

On the other hand, the eligibilty criteria to the National Register of Historic Places is a national standard. The majority of archaeological sites are Not Eligible. Especially not eligible are sites that have no diagnostic artifacts because they were stolen. Anyway, the Geocaching regulations do not distinguish between sites that are significant or crappy, eligible or not. They simply ask that caches not be placed near archaeological resources. Here's the guideline:

 

Caches placed on archaeological or historical sites. In most cases these areas are highly sensitive to the extra traffic that would be caused by vehicles and humans.

 

I don't see how a cache at any petroglyph site wouldn't be disqualified.

 

-Bob

[+Renegade Knight]

The 50 year cut off isn't so much for what needs protecting. It's to set a line so we don't protect everything and can focus consideration on things that are relevant. In other words a line saying "We won't protect anything that's too new"

 

EBR-1 was an exception to the 50 year rule.

 

I'm not an archaeologist and have a hard enough time spelling it. But I do work in a field that uses them and I am impacted by the rules. I could even tell you when the rules do impact private land that otherwise would not be impacted.

 

The law often has an effect different from the intent.

 

If I was an archaeologist I'd be pressuring the government to be allowed to work sites that are high risk. They will be lost due to population pressures over time. I'm also aware of how the construction industry deals with sites they find. If nobody is looking they are obliterated. This is because the law knows no compromise. The project will but shut down until the fullness of time has passed and the cows come home. The net effect is obliteration rather than giving someone a certain amount of time to recover what they can.

 

Back to the original topic. If your archive this cache note fails because it's you are not speaking with the authority of the land owner, contacting the land manager of those lands is the way to go. The average geocacher (me included) wouldn’t recognize a archaeological site from shinola. Of course what people liked in the days of old when they were making archeological sites and what they like now are the same. Rivers, waterfalls, flat areas to camp, cliffs and caves to explore etc. There will be conflicts. However with or without a cache I will enjoy those areas just as this lands forefathers did.

[+Tiwica]

Now, I'm not about to suggest in any way that any geocacher would be so irresponsible so as to knowingly cause damage to an archaeological resource, (and I know I'm streching it here), but if some crazy 'plinker' with a passion for using petroglyphs as targets were to do a Google search for "petroglyph" and were pointed to the geocache.com page because that word was in the description of a recent cache, the exact location of that resource (within 3 meters, of course) would be available to them.

It's already here "A picture says a thousand words"

 

I logged it, but put the coordinates hundreds of miles away, because they have already been vandalized. Is this wrong?

[+briansnat]

n my opinion, they need to come up with a cut-off date, rather than an age. There's just too much 50s and 60s junk. Pretty soon we'll be recording trailer park pads as archaeological sites. I'd personally choose WWII as a cut-off. Post WWII stuff is so common, and so mass produced, and so well documented, that there's very little research interest or potential.

 

That's true. And I was only half joking about the beer can. During an excavation at the site of an 18th century manor house we found everything from a late-archaic axe head, to a rusty Reinghold can. Both were saved, cataloged and labeled and are part of the collection, but the goal of the dig was to learn more about the house and its inhabitants

during the 17 & 1800's.

 

But back to geocaching and archaeology. If the sites are kept secret from the public, how do we know if we are trampling it? I could see a geocacher looking around and CITO'ing all these "distgusting pottery shards" that some litterbug left behind, not realizing that the litterbug was there 700 years ago.

Edited February 6, 2004 by briansnat

[Bobthearch]

Most of out surveys are on public lands about to be impacted. We record everything that's over 50 years old, without regard to significance or site quality. Then all of the sites are avoided by the project. Many of the projects are seismic oil exploration, so simply driving around the site area is the solution. For a recent pipeline, they even routed the pipeline around every site. It wasn't easy, but it was definitely faster and cheaper than excavating.

 

That saves the construction/oil/logging companies precious money - it can be very expensive to determine which sites are eligible to the national register because often subsurface testing (excavations) must be done, and it can slow a project for months, or years even. So by avoiding every site, the project can go one uninterupted with the absolute minimal disturbance to the site.

 

We do occationally survey on private land. That would be for government-funded projects or projects requiring a state or federal permit. Never, in my experience, has a site affected what a landowner can do to his own property. It has affected what pipelines or power companies can do on the private land.

 

The archaeology on some projects is also voluntary. For instance the electric company was biulding a substation on their own land. They hired me to stand and watch them dig, even though they didn't have to. Good for public relations, I guess.

 

Yes, most people wouldn't know they were standing on an archaeological site. The things are ~everywhere~. The point of the geocaching guideline, I assume, wasn't to protect those kinds of sites, but rather the obvious-type sites that are vulnerable to damage. Many places in the country, if the land is level enough to sit on, there's a site. I've probably found and recorded thousands of 'em myself.

 

Many times if a site is found to be insignificant, or "Ineligible for Nomination to the National Register" the project goes on uninterupted through the site.

 

Later,

-Bob

[+Bloencustoms]

It used to be "Geocaching. A way to share interesting places with people of similar interests." It is becoming "Geocaching. A way to share completely banal locations with people who are too driven by a sense of exploration to want to waste time visiting them."

[Bobthearch]

Wow, two new posts in the time I was writing the last...

 

I guess there's a few of us archaeologists here, huh.

 

The virtual cache in which everyone finds their own rock art is interesting. If I were to log a find, I would take the photo but not give the exact coordinates.

 

Someone who CITOs a pile of prehistoric pottery sherds really needs to be informed better. I hope there aren't too many people like that out on public land. I believe most people could tell the difference between Corellware from WalMart and ancient pottery. It's the historic stuff that would most likely end up in dumpsters - spongeware from the 1800s and hole-in-top cans from the early 20th century could easily be "cleaned" up from the woods by inexperienced people trying to do the right thing.

 

The factor there is Intent. Is the person having a clean-up day, or is it some greedy bottle collector who knows what he's doing is illegal but doesn't care because he doesn't have a bottle like that one? To me the worst is "collectors" who rob artifacts from public lands just to sell. They went to all the trouble and risk to steal that blue bottle from some BLM ghost town, but they didn't even like it well enough to keep it. The three dollars was sooo important...

 

Sometimes, on prehistoric sites, some local hicks will dig up a place to get artifacts. Then they sell the artifacts for beer money. Then the items end up being sold somewhere for thousands of dollars. And who gets in trouble if caught digging...

 

Wow. I've wandered pretty far off topic. Good thing the topic was re-located.

 

Later,

Bob

[+Sparky-Watts]

Moderator's Note: This topic was split off from another topic discussing how to get a cache archived. The topic took a turn towards discussing sensitive archaelogical sites, beginning with this post from BrianSnat. As there is some good knowledge in these posts, I moved them to their own topic.

 

That's just fine and dandy, but I was just reading the other thread, and there was no mention of this in that thread.....sure made Bobthearch look nutso....please, for future reference, if a new thread is split off from an existing thread, kindly post notes in both threads so folks like Bob don't look like they're losing their minds, and folks like me that are following them don't suddenly get caught in unfamiliar territory when we finally decide to make a reply.