Idaho National Laboratory Cultural Resource Management Plan

Therefore, the addressable research questions are defined by the project parameters instead of by the
research interest, as in academic research projects. This reversal of the ideal research approach (i.e.,
question formulation, research design, and data recovery) results in a situation that is awkward to control.
This is so because thousands of research questions could be posited for a project area, yet the discovered
archaeological sites may address few, if any. The field archaeologist must be aware of all of these
questions so that potentially significant sites can be recognized, but only those questions that directly
apply to the observed resources are relevant and need to be developed during the analysis and reporting
stages of the project.
The remainder of this section presents research questions that are appropriate for the range of
archeological sites known to exist on and around INL. The questions emerge from the overviews
previously presented. It should be emphasized that a research design is more than a list of research
questions; it must also outline the processes that lead to answers. One of the most difficult aspects of
research design formulation is stating questions so that they can be answered. This often leads to
questions that appear mundane and of little importance, yet they are crucial for addressing the broader
objectives of archaeological research. In response to this, a hierarchical organization of questions and
interests has been proposed (Fowler et al. 1981) as an appropriate organization for regional research
designs. The organization has been successfully incorporated in several large-scale cultural resource
surveys in the Desert West (e.g., Janetski 1981; Janetski and Holmer 1982). The approach organizes
research objectives and questions according to the following outline:
Problem Domains
Research Topics
Research Questions
Data Requirements
Several research topics might be presented under each domain, and several questions under each
topic.
Problem Domains
Problem domains are general categories of research topics that embody all of the objectives of
archaeological research: the who, what, where, when, and why of past cultures. The domains currently
developed for INL are:
Chronology
Settlement and subsistence
Cultural relationships
Demography
Environment
Technology
Material culture data recovery techniques.
There are undoubtedly others that can and will be added, but it is felt that most questions currently
being asked of the archeological record in the upper Snake River Basin fall under one of the
aforementioned domains.
The problem domain of chronology subsumes questions that address when archaeologically defined
cultures existed and how archaeologists recognize those cultures from their material remains. Settlement
and subsistence subsumes questions about settlement patterns and economy, demography about
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