Recognizing Redundant Data: Preventing Perseveration and Saving the Significant

Summary

What is so fascinating about heritage resources? What is it that sparks the imagination and instills a sense of place and wonder? What great lessons can we take away from the past? The most important roles of a federal archaeologist are to try to encourage public interest in questions like those, while preserving select sites with the greatest potential to provide the answers. However, compliance work for federal undertakings often focuses our attention and limited resources on the least significant and most abundant resources such as lithic and historic debris scatters. We must avoid habitually collecting redundant data for upholding tested theories so that new questions can be posed and answered using more modern techniques. Applying the National Register of Historic Places eligibility criteria in standardized ways and other increased efficiencies can free up time to spend on outreach, scientific inquiry, and the protection of sites with greater heritage and data values. This presentation will demonstrate the need and means for a careful and scientific approach to making site eligibility determinations and management recommendations in order to facilitate a focus on the most culturally valuable resources.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20136