Hard Questions for Hardrock Places: Integrating Academic-Based Research Questions into the Management of Hardrock Mining Sites on Public Lands in the Southern California Deserts

Summary

Land-managing agencies have to make tough decisions about what archaeological sites are worth conserving – decisions that are getting tougher as the capacity of agencies continues to be stretched. Academics may disagree with these decisions, yet their approaches to research have long been crucial to defining what is significant. The Bureau of Land Management California (with Statistical Research, Inc.) has recently completed a comprehensive management program for hardrock mining sites on 10+ million acres of public lands in the southern California deserts. The program presents several original and innovative research questions (stemming from theoretical trends in academia) for evaluating National Register of Historic Places eligibility of hardrock mining sites that will advance management, as well as scholarly research, in the region. This presentation explores the challenges and benefits of integrating academic-based approaches into landscape-scale management of historic-era industrial archaeological sites on federal lands.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21508