The Cultural and Historical Resources Technical Advisory Team met in regular session in Conference Room D at the Tucson-PIMA County Public Works Center, 201 N. Stone Avenue, Tucson, Arizona on Monday, October 18, 1999 at 10:00 a.m. Those present and absent were listed as follows:

Present:

Dr. Paul Fish, Arizona State Museum (Chair)
Dr. Beth Grindell, Arizona State Museum
Ms. Linda Mayro, PIMA County Archaeological and Historic Preservation Office
Mr. David Cushman, PIMA County Archaeological and Historic Preservation Office
Ms. Mary Farrell, Coronado National Forest
Mr. Peter Steere, Tohono O'odham Nation Cultural Preservation Office

Absent:

Ms. Susan Wells, National Parks Service
Mr. Jerry Kyle, Arizona Historical Society
Mr. Joe Joaquin, Tohono O'odham Nation Cultural Preservation Office
Mr. Max Witkind, Bureau of Land Management

Note: Ms. Farrell joined the group at 10:55 a.m.

There were no guests or members of the public present

 

1. CALL TO ORDER

The meeting was called to order by Paul Fish at approximately 10:05 a.m.

OLD BUSINESS

2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES FROM SEPTEMBER 27 1999 MEETING

It was decided by the Chair that a quorum of the committee was not present and therefore

the approval of the minutes from the September 18th meeting was deferred until another meeting with a quorum. The meeting continued with the understanding that no decisions would be made on any of the agenda items.

NEW BUSINESS

3. SCOPE OF WORK

Mr. Cushman gave an update on the scope of work that he is preparing and handed out a copy of the three year plan. He then described this as a process that will start with describing what we know in year one. Then in year two, we will collect new information to fill in the gaps to our knowledge. Finally, in year three the results of the studies will be synthesized and reported along with management recommendations.

Ms. Mayro gave a quick update on the funding situation, which is to say we are waiting on Congress and the President. She also explained about the tie in between what the CHTAT will do and the Decision Support model being prepared by the geographers in California.

This lead to a discussion among the team of how we will assign value to cultural resources. There was general agreement that what ever system we use should be consistent with the systems developed by the other technical teams.

4. CULTURAL RESOURCES TYPES - DISCUSSION

The next agenda item focused on the question of how we will classify the archaeological and historical sites database into functional categories for the purpose of both analysis and interpretation.

Ms. Mayro has proposed we use the Arizona State Museum's functional categories for this purpose. At present, the data reflect feature attributes about each site and each occupation of each site, which under her proposal will be need to be converted into meaningful type categories.

Dr. Fish raised the issue of scale; that is, the scale on which site function will be interpreted. For example, rock pile clusters are indicative of prehistoric agricultural activity but these individual clusters may cover hundreds of acres, which in turn may be associated with a large habitation site. So the question is how do we classify this information into meaningful units of observation and analysis.

Then there was a discussion about the quality of data in the AZSITE database and the need to ensure reliability. This will require that additional time and money be spent on quality control and the team agreed with the importance of this task. Mr. Cushman recommended that tackling quality control issue should be the job of the contractor with input and direction from the CH TAT. The team agreed to continue discussion and recognized the need to test Ms. Mayro's classification system on a set of real site data to see how this will work.

5. ASSIGNING VALUE TO CULTURAL RESOURCES - FLOW CHART

The last item on the agenda brought up the issue already raised in the beginning of the meeting. The question is once we have classified the data into the appropriate functional categories how then do we make the distinction between what is important and what is not.

Ms. Grindell passed out a flow chart that she prepared for discussion and went through it with the team. She identified several criteria and a process by which decision making would be made for each cultural resource. Mr. Cushman suggested that we should be explicit about what those criteria are first and then devise the process. Ms. Farrell noted that the criteria used in Ms. Grindell's flow chart was similar to the National Register criteria. Mr. Cushman agreed, and added that we don't have to be limited by those criteria but can build off them to tailor the county's needs for assigning value. Ms. Mayro then recommended a list of 10 criteria that she thought were important for us to include in this process and she asked that the team to think about her recommendations. She also suggested that we assign a numerical value to these criteria and then tally up points to arrive at a total value. Mr. Cushman agreed with this and suggested that we devise a series of questions, one for each of the criteria, and use a sliding ordinal scale to assign value in answering the questions where appropriate.

The discussion of value lead to a question that Mr. Cushman posed to Mr. Steere of the Tohono O'odham on whether traditional cultural properties could be ranked as to relative value or whether these places were all considered to be equally important. Mr. Steere responded by saying that this was a difficult question but that there were some traditional places that were held to be of greater importance to more people that others. This may then present a means of assigning relative value for TCPs.

6. NEXT MEETING

Next meeting will be on Monday, November 11 at 10 a.m. at the public works center. We will continue the discussion about cultural value criteria and the site classification proposal among other topics.

7. ADJOURNMENT

As there was no further business to come before the Cultural and Historic Resources Technical Advisory Team, the meeting was adjourned at 12:05 p.m.