A Cultural Resource Overview for the Amargosa - Mojave Basin Planning Units

This overview is an attempt to pull together existing cultural resource data and to evaluate those resources of the Amargosa-Mojave Basin planning units. It is our goal to provide an evaluation and a description of the data that may be used as a basis for educated management of the cultural resources. These are divided into archaeological, ethnographic and historic resources with a section of the report devoted to each. The archaeological section includes only the aboriginal data. The exclusion of historic material from the archaeological remains reflects the present status of the development of historical archaeology in the Mojave Desert in general, and in the Amargosa-Mojave Basin planning units in particular. Archaeological investigation of historic sites is in an embryonic stage of development. Few historic European sites have been excavated in the Mojave Desert and none in the Amargosa-Mojave Basin planning units. European sites are plentiful and varied, however, the lack of archaeological investigations of these sites necessitate an evaluation based on the historical documentation. Therefore, they have been omitted from the archaeological section.

The cultural resources have been evaluated in terms of chronological sequences projected against the environmental conditions of the Mojave Desert. This approach is carried over into the ethnographic and historic presentations as well, and represents an integrative element of the evaluations. In the ethnographic section adaptation to the desert conditions is emphasized in the discussion of subsistence, social organization and other aspects of culture discussed. The Historical section also takes into consideration the European uses of and adaptation to the Mojave Desert environment. On the basis of this analysis it becomes possible to define broad environmental areas of the desert that are utilized and or adapted to in the varying ways by past populations. The identification of the diverse environmental areas and variations in adaptation and use should form a basis for assessing significance of cultural resources.

This publication combines three reports on cultural resources of the Amargosa-Mojave basin. The individual reports are:

The Archaeology and Archaeological resources of the Amargosa-Mojave Basin Planning Units.

Ethnographic Overview of the Amargosa-Mojave Basin Planning Units.

History of the Amargosa-Mojave Basin Planning Units.

Originally the information in this record was migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. In 2014, as part of its effort to improve tDAR content, the Center for Digital Antiquity uploaded a copy of the document and further improved the record metadata.