Predicting Archaeological Site Locations in the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area in Colorado

Summary

Archaeological predictive models are used in two main applications to 1) identify areas of cultural resource sensitivity in an unsurveyed area and 2) better understand historic and prehistoric use of a landscape. The model created here straddles these two applications, serving to predict cultural resource sensitivity in the primarily unsurveyed McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area (MCNCA), and to understand the distribution of known sites in that area. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages the NCA and its resources. The goal of this predictive model is to aid the BLM in the management of the cultural resources within the MCNCA and better understand which areas may have been important prehistorically and historically.

McInnis Canyons is a relatively new national conservation area, less than 10% of it has been surveyed for cultural resources. A predictive model is extremely useful to the land managers in this case. Hopefully it will aid in decision making processes and facilitate the creation of new recreation facilities. Predictive models have been met with varying success rates. The predictive model created here was at least partially successful during initial testing, further inventory will prove its utility.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage