Idaho National Laboratory Cultural Resource Management Plan

Site taxonomy is based on the amount of variability in the artifacts and features observed at each site
as recorded on the site form. It is not simply the number of different kinds of artifacts, but the number of
different activities implied by those artifacts. For example, several different artifact types might be used
in the killing and field butchering of an antelope (e.g., projectile points, bifaces, and utilized flakes), but
the site simply represents a hunting location. A similar number of artifacts could represent a field camp if
more activities are implied, such as a scraper, projectile point, and ground stone. We would be especially
convinced that a site containing this inventory was a field camp if there was evidence of a fire basin
present (e.g., charcoal or fire-cracked rock). Of course, now the site might be confused with a residential
base, but that should show an even broader range and more intense processing of raw materials.
The five site types are defined as follows:
1. Residential bases are sites that contain artifacts representative of the processing of a variety of
resources (e.g., ground stone, scrapers, bifaces, and utilized flakes). They often contain evidence of
dwellings, storage, and fire basins.
2. Field camps are sites that contain artifacts representative of the processing of a single resource often
accompanied by a fire basin. They may be seed-gathering camps, hunting camps, quarrying camps, or
any other single-resource acquisition campsite.
3. Procurement locations are sites that contain evidence of the procurement of a single type of resource
with little or no processing implied and no evidence of camping. They may be seed gathering
locations, hunting locations, quarrying locations, or any other resource acquisition site. It should be
mentioned that many locations (e.g., seed gathering site) may not leave physical remains behind for
the archaeologist to observe.
4. Caches are isolated storage sites with little or no evidence of the processing of resources and no
evidence of camping. Those storage facilities that accompany residential base sites are not classified
as cache sites unless they are physically separated enough to be distinguished as a separate site.
5. Stations are information gathering and transmitting sites such as vantage points, cairns, and rock art.
Some debris may be present as a result of tool manufacture or maintenance, and limited evidence of
camping may be present. Rock art sites (e.g., pictographs and petroglyphs) that are isolated from
artifacts are classified as stations because of the implied information transmitting characteristics of
the site.
A residual category of unusual sites is also necessary to include sites such as trails and canals. Even
though the site types are presented in a prehistoric context, they are equally applicable to historic sites.
Homesteads are residential bases, line shacks and sheep camps are field camps, agricultural fields and
pastures are procurement locations, fire lookout towers are stations, and grain elevators are caches.
Research Topic: Paleo-Indian occupations. Currently, very little is known about Paleo-Indian
subsistence and settlement in the upper Snake River Basin. Fluted points are commonly found throughout
the basin—as witnessed by so many private collectors owning several examples—but only a single site
has been professionally excavated providing us with information about the subsistence base of the
fluted-point makers. The Wasden Site (Miller 1982) suggests that the occupants of the basin, at
approximately 10,500 years ago, were specialized big game hunters subsisting much like their
contemporaries in the Great Plains. However, some researchers have argued that large stemmed points
were also being made by occupants of the basin at that time and may represent a strategy separate in form,
time, and/or space from the fluted points. Whether some stemmed points are contemporary with or later
than fluted points, which is the more traditional interpretation, is yet to be satisfactorily determined. It is
not until the very last cultural period of the Pleistocene that ground stone shows up in the archaeological
record, indicating that the processing of plant foods was becoming an integral aspect of life on the Snake
River Plain.
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