Land Resources Management
Land and Resources Management
Gold Butte, Nevada
One of the largest and most comprehensive Section 110 cultural studies ever conducted in Nevada is Far Western’s recently completed investigation at Gold Butte. This study was undertaken at the request of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Las Vegas Field Office, which manages Gold Butte. Gold Butte is a complex of management units that include Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs), existing Wilderness Areas, and Wilderness Study Areas encompassing 364,116 acres in the northeast corner of Clark County, Nevada.
Bounded by the Virgin River to the north and west and Colorado River to the south, this region manifests at least 12,000 years of continuous human use. Perhaps most significantly, it marks the western-most expansion of the ancestral Puebloans from their core territories in the Southwest at about AD 800 to 1250. The study area also appears to have been a cross-roads for later-dating populations, including the Patayan and ultimately the Southern Paiute, after the regional collapse of Puebloan settlements at approximately AD 1250. Not surprisingly, the study area exhibits a heterogeneous archaeological record replete with multiple ceramic wares, spectacular examples of both Great Basin and Southwestern rock art traditions, higher-elevation pinyon camps, river-oriented pithouses, massive agave-roasting features, and the ever-ubiquitous flaked and ground stone scatter.
To unravel this story, we implemented a combined program of statistically representative (Class II) sample survey followed by limited test excavation at select sites. All told, 31,196 acres were surveyed resulting in the documentation of 341 prehistoric sites and 387 isolated finds. In addition, nearly 26 cubic meters was hand excavated at nine prehistoric sites. Along with advancing our understanding of the role desert hinterlands play in the land-use practices of river-oriented agricultural groups, as well as shedding light on the complexities of Late Prehistoric population movements in this region, the results of this investigation will used by the BLM to inform future management practices and long-term planning decisions at Gold Butte.
The Bureau of Land Management’s Alturas, Eagle Lake, and Surprise Field Offices
The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Alturas, Eagle Lake, and Surprise field offices are in the process of preparing a Resource Management Plan (RMP) for roughly 2.8 million acres of public lands in northeastern California and northwestern Nevada. As part of this process, Far Western was contracted to prepare a Class I Cultural Resource Overview and Working Research Design, needed to inform management decisions.
The study culminated in a sophisticated sensitivity model developed using “weights of evidence” as a means of predicting prehistoric archaeological site distributions. The model incorporated site and survey locational information provided by the BLM, Forest Service, Caltrans, and the Northeastern Information Center of the California Historical Resource Information System to generate predicted densities of site locations. Over 3,250 sites and 370,000 acres of survey were fed into the GIS-based model which addressed a suite of environmental variables including slope, landform, distance to water, and vegetation.
Two other goals of the study were to identify land use conflicts and data gaps. Using the predictive model, GIS layers were developed to show the relationship between planned land use (grazing allotments, juniper cover) and culturally sensitive landforms. The model is intended to aid resource managers in identifying potential areas of conflict. The management recommendations emphasize that this exercise is intended as a general guide for resource managers, and that planned actions need to be evaluated on a project specific basis. Our analysis also revealed specific areas where the existing cultural resource data base could be improved to better serve both research and resource management.
