Tag: survey

SHPO on a Hippo!

Leave a comment

SHPO_3

You may be chuckling to yourself or asking ‘what on earth is a SHPO?’.  A SHPO is a State Historic Preservation Officer, which was created by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966.  Every state has a SHPO and a SHPO Office.  They oversee the compliance efforts of all federal agencies (i.e. BLM, NRCS, NPS, Forest Service), as well as private companies receiving federal funding.  They are there to help ensure that we make a good faith effort in recording, reporting, protecting, persevering, etc. cultural resources.

Field Photo: Prehistoric Flint Knapping Station

Leave a comment

The majority of the artifacts I come across in the field are flakes, the bits of stone created through knapping.  Flint knapping is the process of reducing cores of stone, such as chert or obsidian, into tools, such as projectile points or scrapers.  It was amazing to find an entire flint knapping station, where I could see the lithic reduction process from beginning to end.  I could put some of the flakes back together to form part of a core. I could see hundreds of bits if shatter.  And, just think, someone was sitting here hundreds of years ago, making stone tools.

*As ever, it is illegal and unethical to remove artifacts from public lands (i.e. Forest Service, BLM, NPS, etc).