Transportation

Transportation

Through Caltrans grants from the Federal Transportation Enhancement Activity programs, Far Western has been responsible for six major cultural resources inventories for Caltrans Districts 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 9, and 10. When we complete the District 1 inventory in 2010 we will have surveyed over 4,000 miles and recorded 2,400 resources in 37 counties. Each project includes a cultural resources inventory, geoarchaeological assessment, ethnographic and ethnogeographic research, and Native American consultations. These inventories provide each District with the location, character, and condition of cultural resources within rural highways’ right-of-way, and a customized database developed by Far Western to integrate resource records, locations of ethnographic importance, and mapped representation of geoarchaeological sensitivity. The database is the standard for Caltrans’ efforts to maintain cultural resource information in a digital format.  The geoarchaeological assessments have identified and mapped the age of surface landforms and provided a strong foundation for estimating the potential for buried archaeological resources. This enables Caltrans planners to estimate site densities and the probability of buried cultural resources within the millions of acres of the various districts. The project has also presented original research by Dr. Randall Milliken on the distribution of major ethnolinguistic groups and local communities at the time of European contact.