Lessons From the White Mountain Planning Unit: a Small-Sample Survey Design for Large Areas

Summary

Archeological research confronts its practitioners with a series of challenges. At the most general level such challenges are couched in terms of who, when, where, and even perhaps why and how questions. For those engaged in "applied" research--cultural resource management or CRM--additional challenges are presented; the archeologist is accountable to the contracting agent for the expenditure of funds, for timely performance, for providing required information--in short for the CRM practictioner there exist managerial challenges as well. However, in only a limited sense is the last word in CRM "management," for the archeologist does remain accountable to the expectations of professional standards. The concept of professional expectations is what governs "pure" research and it should also apply to contract studies because contracts, and Federal law and policy (which often structure CRM goals), usually provide only broad, minimal guidelines for the archeologist.

As more archeologists become more involved with contract projects, there is an increasing danger that the intellectual challenges become overlooked amid the welter of managerial concerns. This need not be the case. Is is a central theme of the present collection of papers that both managerial and intellectual needs may be served simultaneously, that the two sometimes-divergent sets of challenges need not be considered mutually exclusive.

This document discusses a number of issues related to regional sampling designs, and will attempt to show how the discussion of these issues is germane to managerial concerns and to the development of archaeological methods as well. The discussion pertains to a modification and improvement of the sampling design used in a survey and assessment of cultural resources undertaken on the White Mountain Planning Unit, Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, Arizona; the original design has been reported elsewhere, and the sampling scheme has some inherent problems when viewed in retrospect. The original design represents a specific response to a challenge presented by the Forest Service: Initiate an inventory of the cultural resources on a given tract in such a manner that population estimates of the kinds, density and distribution of those resources may be provided; do this with given constraints on the area involved and on the amounts of time and funds that can be expended. This paper represents a response to a different challenge: How might the original design be improved? Hence, as a retrospective assessment, the following discussion details some of the lessons learned from the study of the White Mountain Planning Unit.

The sampling design was constructed for a particular area in the southwestern U. S.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Salt River Project Digital Library   •
• SRP Miscellaneous   •
• National Archeological Database (NADB)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Salt River Project Cultural Resource Manager

Contributor(s): Albert A. Dekin, Jr., Dr.; Edwin Hession; Judith Rasson; Pandora Snethkamp

Landowner(s): U. S. Forest Service

Sponsor(s): U. S. Forest Service

Record Identifiers

Salt River Project Library Barcode No.(s): 00030416

NADB Citation ID No.(s): 000000104234

NADB Document ID No.(s): 863264

Notes

General Note: The copy from which the NADB citation was made is located at the Utah Division of State History, Salt Lake City, Utah.

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