AZSITE CONSORTIUM
Quarterly Meeting, ASM
Tuesday, January 11, 2000
Minutes
- Beth Grindell called the meeting to order at 9:40 am and noted that, due to traffic problems, Michael Barton and Carol Griffith would arrive late. Additionally, Peter McCartney was unable to attend so there would be no standing committee report from the database management committee. A suggestion to start the meeting by discussing the DraftTribal Lands Policy was accepted. The discussion commenced and Griffith and Barton arrived at 10 am and 10:15 am, respectively.
- There was a discussion of approximately two hours length on the AZSITE Draft Tribal Lands Policy that had been mailed to tribal chairs and cultural resource staff at the end of November. In brief, the proposed policy states that data from tribal reservation lands will not be included in the AZSITE database unless a tribe provides express written permission for data from its lands to be included. The following highlights the major points raised in the discussion:
 | Wilcox noted that Dallas Massey, White Mountain Apache Tribal Chair, had requested that a vote by the AZSITE consortium on the policy be postponed to allow adequate time for review and comment. |
| Several tribal representatives noted that the mailing of the draft policy had taken a long time to reach them and it had not been possible for the tribes, either individually or collectively through the Intertribal Council, to review the policy. |
| There was consensus in favor of postponing the vote until the Consortium could meet individually with as many tribes as requested to discuss AZSITE. |
| Hamilton and Begay both noted that this was the first time AZSITE had been brought to their attention. Grindell noted that representatives of both Hopi and Navajo have attended several earlier meetings. Notices of meetings and minutes of meetings are on the AZSITE web site and are sent via e-mail or US mail to all interested parties or people who have attended past meetings. |
| Joaquin noted, and Hamilton and Shumaker concurred, that many tribes view all archaeological sites as part of their ancestral lands, whether or not they are on present tribal lands and that therefore the tribes are concerned about issues of security and access for all sites, not just those on present tribal lands. |
| In response to several questions about data security, Griffith noted that every day we loose sites to construction or vandalism and that it is imperative to get control over information we do have. Furthermore, the SHPO is mandated to inventory archaeological and historic sites and to hold the information for review and compliance purposes. For tribes that do not maintain their own inventories or have their own HPO, it is critical that SHPO hold the information so that neither the knowledge nor the sites are destroyed. |
| There continues to be very strong concerns about data security and access policies. Barton noted that the consortium will begin to work on a data security white paper. |
| Alex Ramon and Camillus Lopez requested that the consortium members meet with the Tohono O’odham cultural preservation committee and legislative council. Ramon Riley requested the consortium meet with the White Mountain Apache Tribe some time over the summer. Grindell noted that the July AZSITE meeting will be in Flagstaff. Since the consortium has no travel funds, perhaps meetings with some northern tribes could be coordinated with that meeting. |
Barton noted that the comments elicited seemed to favor postponing a vote on the draft policy and asked for a motion. Grindell moved to postpone vote to a later meeting and Griffith seconded it. The vote to postpone was unanimous. Barton stated that the draft policy does not require any particular terms for participation but that the consortium hopes that the tribes will tell us how they want to participate. In the absence of a formal policy on the handling of data from tribal lands, the defacto policy, which precludes the incorporation of data from tribal reservation lands, will remain in effect.
Because the meeting was running over schedule, several items were tabled including review of minutes of the last meeting, a status report on grants and reports from reports from the database and management standing committees.
- The first item of new business was a review of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan (SDCP). Grindell explained that in June, 1999, ASM had entered into an agreement to enter cultural data from eastern Pima County into the AZSITE database, with the proviso that it be available to Pima County planning officials, under supervision and control of Pima County’s cultural resource managers. She then introduced Pima County cultural resource managers Linda Mayro and David Cushman to describe the SDCP and the role cultural resources will play in it.
Linda Mayro discussed the rationale for the SDCP:
| Pima County does cultural resource review and compliance on virtually all construction projects in the county. Additionally, in 1997, voters approved $6.4 million for acquisition, rehabilitation and adaptive reuse of existing cultural resources. |
| The SDCP was established, with an initial grant from the Department of the Interior, to develop a comprehensive land use plan to deal with the rapid rate of growth in Pima County. It deals with the land east of the Tohono O’odham Nation lands (and excluding the San Xavier District) where unincorporated lands are being bladed at the rate of 13 acres per day and where population has grown from 265,000 in 1960 to 800,000 in 1997. |
| Due to the rapid rate of growth and the provisions of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), much land use planning is currently taking place through litigation. Pima County will use the SDCP to develop a comprehensive land use plan that will enable it to get a §10 permit under the ESA, which allows "incidental take" of protected species under certain conditions and only when there is a plan in place that provides overall protection to the species. |
| Under the terms of the SDCP, Pima County is including cultural resources (archaeological and historic properties, ranches, rural historic landscapes, and traditional cultural places) in the planning project. This requires the development of data layers of cultural properties for inclusion on maps of all varieties of resources, both biological and cultural, that need protection. ASM has been helping to prepare those data layers by entering ASM data on archaeological sites into AZSITE. |
| Mayro hopes that it will be possible to have conditions attached to the ESA §10 permit that will require similar treatment and consideration of cultural resources as for biological resources. |
| Archaeological survey indicates that less than 11% of eastern Pima County has been surveyed for cultural resources, some areas have been intensively surveyed, other areas only lightly surveyed. A proposal is being submitted to the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training to develop a model for determining where site densities are likely to occur. |
| A Cultural and Historic Resources Technical Advisory Team, headed by Paul Fish, is developing an understanding of rural historic landscapes and associated historic properties, as well as of traditional cultural places, for which they are consulting with members of the Tohono O’odham Nation. |
| Site density by acre mirrors the survey data, although it may be necessary to develop a geomorphological model to deal with buried sites. Wilcox noted here that they may well find a zonal model of densely inhabited areas surrounded by use areas and empty areas with only trails. |
| AZSITE data are critical to the ability to model site distributions for conservation planning purposes. ASM was contracted to complete data entry of the approximately 7100 known sites and 762 surveys. |
| An accelerated planning schedule and a need to make complicated data comprehensible to non-professionals have created a complicated process. However, the current process is reactive and is resulting in the "piece-mealing" of the archaeological record out of existence. A good plan, even if complicated to develop, will allow Pima County to act proactively to preserve areas in need of protection and shift development to areas that do not need protection. |
In general discussion, Griffith noted the value of the database for planning and protection. Wilcox noted that this type of data sharing does raise the issue of cloning of data to other systems, but that the advantages of being able to do this type of planning require this type of use of the data. Mayro discussed Pima County’s security provisions and noted furthermore that no one has asked to see the data and that the system has never been hacked. Griffith mentioned that the types of "fuzzed" data that Pima County is producing (where data are presented in summary form) is exactly what ASLD will probably need so this may serve as a good model for their applications.
- In the second item of new business, Paul Fish, of ASM, discussed a University of Arizona cooperative agreement with the Instituto National de Antropologia y Historia (INAH) in Mexico. Under this agreement, INAH and UA will be exchanging scholars and other resources, under sub-agreements between ASM/UA and INAH/Sonora. Elisa Villalpando, of INAH/Sonora, would like to develop an AZSITE-based database for Sonoran archaeology and to participate as a member of the consortium. Barton noted that for legal and logistical reasons it may not be possible to include Sonoran data in AZSITE but we should work together to insure compatibility issues and to make both databases available through the AZSITE web site. Additionally, nothing precludes, and in fact we encourage, INAH/Sonora to apply for a user license and to adopt the data-entry module.
- The next AZSITE meeting was set for April 18, 2000, at ARI, Tempe, at 9:30 am. The meeting was adjourned at 1:20 pm.
Participants:
| Michael Barton | ASU | presiding |
| Beth Grindell | ASM | recording |
| Peter McCartney | ASU | |
| Steve Erdmann | MNA | |
| Carol Griffith | SHPO | Chair |
| David R. Wilcox | Museum of Northern Arizona | |
| Jon Shumaker | Ak-Chin Indian Community | |
| Cari Kreshak | Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community | |
| Dallas D. Enos | Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community | |
| Rick Karl | ASM | |
| Linda Martin | A-SNF/AAAC | |
| Marcy-Jean Mattson | Ft McDowell Indian Community | |
| Laura Wallace | Navajo Nation/ASM Advisory Group | |
| Clarenda Begay | ASM Advisory Group/Navajo Nation Museum | |
| Brad Stone | Archaeological Research Services, Inc | |
| Sharon Urban | ASM | |
| Chad Smith | Ft Mohave Tribe/San Carlos Apache Tribe | |
| Vernelda Grant | San Carlos Apache/Archaeologist | SRPMIC |
| David Cushman | Pima County Cultural Resources | |
| Linda Mayro | Pima County Cultural Resources | |
| Camillus Lopez | Tohoho O’odham Nation | |
| Marci Donaldson | ASM/CAPR | |
| Alyce Sadongei | ASM | |
| Peter L. Steere | Tohono O’odham Nation | |
| Barnaby V. Lewis | Gila River Indian Community | |
| Joseph T. Joaquin | Tohono O’odham Nation | |
| Elaine F. Peters | Ak-Chin Indian Community | |
| Graciela Barajas | Tohono O’odham Legislative Council Cultural Resources Liaison | |
| Clay Hamilton | Hopi Tribe CPO | |
| Brett Hill | ASU | |
| Ramon Riley | White Mountain Apache Tribe | |
| Ron Chiago | Salt River Indian Community | |
| Alex Ramon | Tohono O’odham Nation | |
| Paul R. Fish | ASM |