Archaeological Report
Harney County Oregon, Range Seeding Projects

This report is a sunrmary of the findings of the Burns District 1979 and 1980 field seasons cultural resource surveys, which were performed in support of range seeding projects. Approximately 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) were surveyed in 17 proposed seeding areas. All except one of these areas are located in the Drewsey Planning Unit. This unit encompasses a region about forty miles east-west by seventy miles north-south, west of Burns, north of Steens Mountain and south of Malheur National Forest, including most of the northeastern portion of Harney County (see Figure 1).

The surveys were done by a crew of seasonal archeologists hired by BLM that varied from three to seven persons at any one time. Unfortunately, the District Archeologist position was vacant during this time so the project was not as well coordinated as might have been desired. Overall, the project was well-done and met its primary goal of protecting significant cultural resources, but review of the materials produced shows that a number of secondary opportunities for generating useful data were missed. A critique of the project design and techniques employed to implement it is included throughout this report, not as an attempt to impugn the validity of this project, but as a general guideline to help improve similar projects in the future.

In all cases, it must be remembered that the descriptions and conclusions presented here are based on after-the-fact analysis of the available information. This constraint places limits on the types of research questions that can be approached and the validity of any conclusions, but hopefully the presentation of this material will provide a comparative base from which to evaluate similar resources in the area.