Cultural Resource Management

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Long-Term Survey in Big Bend National Park

The Center initiated its CRM Program in September 1995 as work began on a major archeological investigation in Big Bend National Park. This broad-scale survey project, entitled "A Comprehensive Sampling of Archeological Resources in Big Bend National Park, Texas," involves an interdisciplinary approach to archeological and historical site inventory, assessment, interpretation, and management.

Jointly sponsored by Sul Ross State University/Center for Big Bend Studies and the National Park Service/Big Bend National Park, the project is designed to ultimately allow development of a predictive capability for cultural resources throughout the park environs.

Through an intensive, environmentally stratified archeological survey, project personnel plan to record and assess cultural resources across 12-15 percent of the over 800,000 acres in the park. These data, in tandem with a Geographic Information System (GIS) being developed for Big Bend, will facilitate an understanding through time of the relationship between cultural resources and environmental settings in this extremely large and topographically-varied park.

The first phase of the project involves intensive (100 percent areal coverage) survey of eight control quadrats (each about 5,000 acres; 4.5 x 4.5 km areas) or about 40,000 acres.

These quadrats are judgmentally placed in order to properly sample the diverse terrain of the park. They will provide background data for the remainder of the survey, much of which will be accomplished through the use of smaller quadrats (each about 500 acres; 1.5 x 1.5 km areas) that will be both judgmentally and randomly placed.

Although funding for this long-term project has been somewhat problematical in recent years, a total of 17,500 acres have been surveyed and 405 sites recorded thus far.

The vast majority of the recorded sites are prehistoric open campsites-other prehistoric site types documented include lithic scatters, quarries/lithic procurement sites, and special-use sites (i.e., sites with unknown functions due to environmental settings, the features and/or artifacts present, or a combination of these factors).

Historic sites recorded include open campsites, road-side stops, ranching-related sites, probable gravel quarries, and several sites related to the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) activities in the 1930s. Artifactual materials observed and collected during the course of the survey indicate a human presence in the park from Paleoindian times through the mid-twentieth century.