Developing a Condition Monitoring Plan for Archeological Sites at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Transcending Boundaries and Exploring Pasts: Current Archaeological Investigations of the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Cultural Resources Program at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (ORPI) manages multiple cultural resource types across the unit. As part of the National Park Service’s (NPS) overall mission to preserve and protect natural and cultural resources, regular condition assessments of the monument’s archaeological sites should be a high priority. Monitoring archaeological sites on a regular schedule greatly aids in determining the overall status of the monument’s cultural resources, the most frequent site disturbance types, and enables cultural resources staff to make better informed management decisions. Due to staff changes, policy modifications, and budgetary adjustments, many archaeological sites at ORPI have been either inconsistently monitored or not monitored at all since their initial recording. All of these factors contribute to an increasing backlog of needed site monitoring.

This work presents the methods, documentation, and results of the 2018 archaeological site monitoring conducted at ORPI. The study concludes with the resulting data learned regarding the frequency and intensity of disturbance types observed throughout the sites that were assessed, where these sites are most impacted, and what mitigating actions ORPI recommends regarding future site assessments according to site types and the site disturbance frequencies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Transcending Boundaries and Exploring Pasts: Current Archaeological Investigations of the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24983