Man, Models and Management: An Overview of the Archaeology of the Arizona Strip and the Management of Its Cultural Resources

By Jeffrey H. Altschul and Helen C. Fairley

Technical Series 11

417 pp. / 1989

Man, Models and Management: An Overview of the Archaeology of the Arizona Strip and the Management of Its Cultural Resources

The region encompassing the land north and west of the Colorado River in the state of Arizona is the subject of this Class I cultural resources overview. This region, commonly referred to as the Arizona Strip, contains approximately 3.5 million acres, of which 2.75 million acres are administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), 650,000 acres are under the jurisdiction of the USDA Forest Service, and the balance is controlled by various state and federal agencies, Indian tribes, and private concerns. Within the Arizona Strip, approximately 4,000 archaeological sites have been recorded. Of these, about 1,500 are found on land administered by the BLM, slightly over 700 are located on the North District of the Kaibab National Forest, about 1,200 are situated north of the Colorado River within the confines of the Grand Canyon National Park, and close to 400 sites are found north of the Colorado River in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. The rest have been recorded by various state and private institutions on non-federally controlled land.

This overview is divided into two parts. Part One consists of six chapters which provide background information on the prehistory, history, and environment of the Arizona Strip. Environmental data are brought to bear showing the strong bimodal pattern of precipitation and temperature that currently affects the region. Information gathered from four paleoclimatic indicators—tree-rings, prehistoric pollen, alluvial stratigraphies, and packrat middens—shows that various climatic regimes have established themselves at different times and in different parts of the Strip during the late Quaternary period.

Archaeological data are then brought to bear on the issues of cultural development. Little information exists on the earliest periods of human occupation, the Paleoindian and the Archaic. The succeeding Formative period is much better represented. Over 60 percent of the recorded sites on BLM and Forest Service land date to this period. Although most information about prehistoric occupations on the Arizona Strip relates to the Formative, there is still very little known about the exact nature of culture at this time. Clearly, the societies occupying the region were greatly influenced by the developments to the east associated with the Kayenta Branch of the Anasazi culture. Topics such as the nature of outside influence, the importance of plant domesticates, and the sudden abandonment of the region around A.D. 1200 still need more study.

Part Two concerns the management of cultural resources on the Arizona Strip. This part is divided into four chapters. The discussion begins with an overview of the types and distributions of know cultural resources throughout the Arizona Strip. This presentation includes a series of graphic illustrations showing general site location for the region as well as maps specifically designed for BLM and Forest Service administered lands.

With the resources in mind, the discussion proceeds to an evaluation of the structure of the BLM and Forest Service cultural resource management (CRM) programs. Both agencies are dedicated to a balanced CRM program that includes both identifying and mitigating potential adverse impacts of development projects on significant cultural resources and the enhancement and development of cultural resources as a goal in and of itself. Yet it is clear that the current CRM programs of both agencies are geared primarily toward meeting their compliance objectives. While understandable, given the legal priority of compliance work, this orientation has the result of placing both programs in a reactive as opposed to an active posture vis-à-vis cultural resource management. In the long run, such a narrow focus is not in the best interest of sound management.

The final two chapters provide a series of recommendations. At the most general level, it is suggested that both agencies adopt procedures that allow the results of compliance work to be routinely synthesized in a manner conducive to addressing the research topics outlined in Part One.

A specific approach, termed red flag modeling, is described. Two examples of the approach derived from areas of current concern for the Forest Service and the BLM are presented. The document concludes with a discussion of specific actions each agency could immediately adopt to improve the efficiency and quality of their CRM programs.