The Site With the Most Stuff Wins: Assessing Ephemeral Sites for the National Register

Summary

As archaeologists working in cultural resource management we are called upon to assess the potential research value of the resources encountered during survey. We judge the merits of these sites against the criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. The more material you find at a site the easier it is to assess. This has the potential to bias the sites we investigate towards “richer” sites and as a result sites with lower densities of materials are too often discounted and not properly considered. These ephemeral sites may represent cultural groups or activities that would go undocumented without archaeological investigation. This paper examines this problem and offers a few suggestions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014   •
• Assessing Ephemeral Sites: Questions That Count in Cultural Resource Management

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-53,08