New Research and Emerging Scholars Working on Public Lands Administered by the Bureau of Land Management

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

The Bureau of Land Management is responsible for the stewardship of more than 247 million acres of public lands, comprising 10% of the total area of the United States and containing some of the most significant heritage resources in the nation. Federal mandates require the BLM to manage these resources in a multiple use context that meet historic preservation goals while simultaneously providing for varied uses of the nation's land for present and future generations. An important element of this balancing act is proactive archaeological research to benefit both the academic discipline and the public. Archaeological research contributes vital information to develop effective management approaches through the identification of context, significance, and landscape level relationships. Investigations of the past also benefit the public as the basis for heritage values education by providing research opportunities for students and seasoned scholars. By jointly developing research programs that address these relationships, the BLM works to more effectively promote and support archaeological investigations that will be of the greatest value to the public. This symposium highlights recent and ongoing archaeological investigations conducted on BLM lands to underscore the significant role of public land management agencies in facilitating, conducting and sponsoring academic archaeological research.

Other Keywords
Rock Art • Management • BLM • settlement • Land Use • Rockshelters • Survey • Petroglyphs • Climate Change • Hunter-Gatherer

Geographic Keywords
North America - California • North America - Great Basin • American Southwest • New Mexico (State / Territory) • United States of America (Country) • North America (Continent) • Southeastern New Mexico • Permian Basin • North American - Basin Plateau • USA (Country)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-9 of 9)

  • Documents (9)
Documents
  • Digital Data Collection, D-Stretch And Databases: New Approaches To Recording Rock Art In Lincoln County (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Catacora. Jo McDonald.

    A BLM-funded rock art recordation project recently undertaken in Lincoln County, Southern Nevada has focused on three Areas of Environmental Concern: Mount Irish, Shooting Gallery and Pahroc. The overall Project was designed to be a comprehensive heritage inventory of all archaeological evidence in these Areas, and based on a systematic sample there are close to 700 recorded sites in these areas of which around 200 contain rock art. Building on earlier work by the Nevada Rock Art Foundation and...

  • Evaluating Land Use in the Mojave Sink: Survey Data from Afton Canyon, San Bernardino County, California. (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Aaron Woods. Barbara Roth. Katelyn DiBenedetto.

    The primary objective of this research project is to assess the function of sites located on the rim and plateau above Afton Canyon in the Mojave Desert to determine how they fit into regional patterns of subsistence and settlement defined during previous work in the area. Archaeological sites identified during a recent survey include multi-component artifact scatters, lithic reduction areas, and hunting blinds. These sites provide new information on prehistoric use of Afton Canyon. We present...

  • Hunter-Gatherer Storage and Settlement: A View from the Central Sierra Nevada (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Carly Whelan.

    Though optimal foraging theory is useful for examining hunter-gatherer subsistence decisions, food storage falls outside the scope of traditional models, because it separates foraging effort from consumption. The time that foragers spend accumulating a surplus for storage has the potential to conflict with the time they need for other activities during seasons of abundance, creating opportunity costs to storage. Changes in settlement strategies can alter these opportunity costs and affect...

  • A New View of the Desert - The Permian Basin Programmatic Agreement Research Program in Southeastern New Mexico (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Stein.

    The research program described in this paper is providing much needed new information for a portion of southeastern New Mexico that was previously understudied. The program is funded by an innovative approach to Section 106 compliance which trades redundant survey information for monetary contributions to a dedicated research account. The Permian Basin Programmatic Agreement (PA) has been in effect for six years. The purpose of the PA (formerly the Permian Basin Memorandum of Agreement or MOA)...

  • Paleoindians and Rockshelters in the Middle Rocky Mountains (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcel Kornfeld. George Frison.

    Since at least the 1980s the University of Wyoming has conducted Paleoindian and rockshelter studies on BLM administered properties from northern Colorado to southern Montana. The cooperative and assistance agreements have benefited both the agency and the University. An enormous amount of research effort contributed by the faculty and enhanced by volunteers and avaocationals, have produced results far beyond what could have been accomplished without the cooperation. The results include students...

  • The Past, Present, and Future of Archaeological Investigation on the BLM: An Introduction to Public Research on Public Lands. (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Overly.

    The overall symposium provides a series of case examples that demonstrate the important role the BLM plays in promoting proactive non-compliance related archaeological research. This introductory paper sets the frame by offering direct experience from multiple perspectives working on BLM land as a field school student, graduate student researcher, volunteer, contractor, and agency archaeologist. This is done to provide additional context for how the BLM has typically supported archaeological...

  • Pay Dirt in the Mojave Desert: An Assistance Agreement between Cal Poly Pomona and the California Bureau of Land Management (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Allen.

    This paper reports on more than a decade of archaeological fieldwork conducted at two archaeological landscapes in the western Mojave Desert by Cal Poly Pomona undergraduate students on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Ridgecrest Field Office. The majority of funding for the project was provided by a multi-year BLM Assistance Agreement. It represents an outstanding example of a "win-win" partnership between a university and government agencies. Students received training in...

  • Setting and Function of the Pahranagat Valley, NV, Petroglyphs: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only David Whitley.

    Rock art is landscape art, but what may be inferred from its setting and associations? It is commonly believed that function directly follows from setting and locational association, but the assumptions underlying this inference are not examined. The Lincoln County Class III rock art inventory is partly directed at the landscape implications of the Pahranagat Valley, NV, petroglyphs, providing an opportunity to consider this question. Associational inference, appropriately applied, combined with...

  • Volcanic Tableland Rock Art: Research and Management in the Western Great Basin (2015)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Josephine McDonald. Gregory Haverstock. David Lee.

    The Volcanic Tableland north of Bishop, California has been the focus of significant previous research (e.g. Bettinger, Basgall, Giambastiani), which has been mobilized by proactive BLM Archaeologists (E. Levy, K. Halford, and G. Haverstock) to generate a predictive model for managing cultural sensitivity against recreational impacts. Further innovation has been the use of specialized rock art recorders (represented by Western Rock Art Research) to document the petroglyphs and petroglyphs of...