The Blaine Site - South Dakota State Historical Society

3.2. PREVIOUS INVESTIGATIONS 25
The next period of archaeological study of the Black Hills, beginning about
1971 and continuing to the present, has been dominated by cultural resource
management (CRM) projects. A large number of surveys were conducted to
assess the archaeological potential of areas slated for mining exploration, logging,
highway and pipeline construction, and construction of public facilities and
small dams. CRM archaeology arose in response to several new federal and state
antiquities-protection regulations. These projects were specifically designed to
identify and evaluate sites that might be eligible for inclusion in the National
Register of Historic Places and thus for special protection as important historic
resources. Survey projects in the Black Hills were conducted by the US Forest
Service, the South Dakota State Archaeological Research Center, the Office of
the Wyoming State Archaeologist, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the National
Park Service, and private consultants under contract to the forenamed agencies.
Reports of these projects number in the hundreds, and no attempt will be made
to list them here. (Interested readers are referred to Buechler 1984, Cassells et
al. 1984, and Sundstrom 1989 for more detailed listings.)
These surveys resulted in the discovery of about 5000 previously unrecorded
sites and, more importantly, gave the first realistic picture of the distribution and
diversity of archaeological remains in the area. CRM archaeologists discovered
a wide variety of sites. Most were lithic scatters, representing either special
activity areas or larger camp sites; many historic sites were found as well. These
surveys established that prehistoric sites were present throughout the Black Hills
and that the entire Northwestern Plains culture sequence, from Paleoindian to
Historic, was represented.
Most of the CRM survey reports were descriptive rather than analytical, but
all contained detailed information on site morphology, artifact types, and environmental
variables. This information would prove invaluable both to future
CRM efforts and to the more analytical studies to follow. A few survey projects
went beyond the basic site descriptions to include analyses of settlement patterns
in regard to distance to water, proximity of natural resources, topographic position,
and ecological zonation (Haug 1977, 1978a, 1978b; Chevance 1978, 1979;
Tratebas 1978a, 1978b; Reher and Lahren 1977). Other studies examined tool
to debitage ratios as a potential indicator of site function (Sigstad and Jolley
1975; Tratebas 1978a, 1978b; Sundstrom 1981). These were important forays
into more analytical studies of area prehistory.
Test-excavation projects followed some of the CRM surveys. Most of these
were done by South Dakota State Archaeological Research Center personnel
(Haug 1979, 1981; Haug et al. 1980; Tratebas 1978b, 1979; Tratebas and Vagstad
1979; Hovde 1981; Sundstrom 1981). Two other CRM projects were an attempt
to mitigate damage to a large central Black Hills occupation site (Buechler
1984) and a series of test excavations at a federally administered reservoir in
the southern Black Hills (Weston 1983). While many of the sites were disappointing,
others contained intact buried deposits. These testing projects served
to reiterate the diversity and complexity of Black Hills archaeology, as well as
to protect the important sites from unmitigated destruction.