The Federal Archeology Program Report to Congress for 1988-90

National Park Service; Archeology and Ethnography Program; Knudson, Ruthann; McManamon, Francis; Myers, J.

Public Education and Participation. The Forest Service "Passport in Time," and the Bureau of Land Management "Adventures in the Past" were established as outstanding volunteer programs. Private citizens were provided more opportunities to take part in professionally supervised investigations on Federal lands. Land management agencies actively participated in State-based programs such as the Arizona Site Stewards and Alaska Archeology Week. Efforts to Fight Looting and Preserve the Archeological Record in Place. Between $1 million to $2 million was spent in archeological law enforcement annually increasing the identification of looting incidents, site monitoring and surveillance. Over 900 incidents of archeological looting violations were documented on Federal and Indian lands in 1990, a 30% increase from 1988 and twice that from 1985. The number of arrests and prosecutions for violations are declining, while convictions were relatively constant. Interagency Cooperation in Information Exchange. Federal agencies utilized partnerships and cost-share programs to leverage more resources for research and public outreach activities. The National Archeological Database administered by NPS was being made available as an online system to disseminate information on archeology reports. Notification to Tribes of proposed archeological work that could harm sites of religious or cultural significance increased approximately 40% -50% and is over 5 times more notifications than had been reported in 1985. Site Inventories and Investigations. Compliance-related archeological investigations costing roughly $50 million per year were reported. An estimated 55,000 Federally authorized archeological investigations were conducted annually which is triple the number reported in 1985. About 25 million acres, less than 4% of the Federal and Indian lands, has been inventoried thoroughly enough to identify all of the archeological properties evident on these lands. Only 4.7% of the estimated 9 million archeological sites on Federal and Indian lands have been identified and about 6% have been formally evaluated for the National Register. Under ARPA Section 14, added in 1988 (P.L. 100-555), 6 of the 13 key Federal agencies have begun the process of agency-wide planning for systematic inventories of their lands. Curation of Collections and Records. Publication of the 36 CFR 79 regulations about the management of collections from Federal and Indian lands focused agency attention on these issues. Agencies initiated training courses in archeological curation and collections management, specifically oriented to implementation of the 36 CFR 79 regulations