In order to protect places on the land, we must first decide what should be protected. The Southwest is rich with precious places that speak to 12,000 years of human history.
Archaeology Southwest partners with local communities, agencies, tribal entities, and other stakeholders to develop a comprehensive vision for how to identify, describe, evaluate, locate, and protect the places of our past. We do this by systematically organizing information about the known prehistoric and rural historic record of the Southwest.
Through the application of objective criteria and expert knowledge, Archaeology Southwest has helped to identify the highest-priority places to protect, as well as strategies to protect them. The result is something special: a vision for how to successfully protect our cultural heritage on the land for future generations.
To read about the process in greater detail, click here.
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Click here to see where Priority Area Planning has been completed, as of September 2015 (link opens as a PDF). To obtain Priority Area shapefiles and general attribute data please contact Andy Laurenzi by email. |
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Click here to read Laurenzi, Peeples, and Doelle (2013), “Cultural Resources Priority Area Planning in Sub-Mogollon Arizona and New Mexico,” Advances in Archaeological Practice: A Journal of the Society for American Archaeology 1(2):61–76 (link opens as a PDF). The article explains the planning process and how it informs preservation actions. |
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Click here to read about priority prehistoric cultural resources in Arizona’s Pinal County (link opens as a PDF). |
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Click here to read about priority cultural resource planning in southeastern Arizona’s San Pedro River valley (link opens as a PDF). |
