AZSITE: Arizona's Cultural Resource Inventory

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Proposed policy on data about Archaeological and historicl sites on tribal lands and the the AZSITE Cultural Resource Inventory AZSITE Consortium, October 1999

Background

For decades, the four members of the AZSITE Consortium—the Arizona State Museum, Arizona State University Department of Anthropology, the Museum of Northern Arizona, and the State Historic Preservation Office—have archived and managed information about archaeological and historic sites, and about archaeological surveys within the State of Arizona. This always has included information about sites on federal, state, tribal, municipal, and private land. These members have made this information available to bona fide archaeologists and cultural resource managers under their institutional policies and applicable State and Federal statutes. This information has been maintained and made available at the member institutions/agencies for the two related goals of preserving archaeological and historic resources and using these resources to gain a better understanding of the human past. Historically, the users of this information have regularly included archaeologists and historians from federal, state and local government; private cultural resource management agencies; representatives of tribal cultural resource offices; and trained archaeologist and historian researchers.

This site and survey information was originally collected and archived on paper and photographic media. In the last few decades, a subset of this information has been put into digital format at all the member institutions to improve their abilities to properly manage and more effectively use this information. Nevertheless, archiving archaeological and historic site data at four (and even more) institutions and in different data formats led to inevitable overlapping records, misrecorded sites, and other errors. It also made the effective use of the four data sets very difficult for bona fide users. In 1995 the four member institutions and agency entered into a formal agreement to share the information about archaeological and historic sites and surveys previously archived at each locale in a single database in order to better achieve the purposes for which this information was originally collected and maintained. This was the formation of the AZSITE Consortium.

This data sharing agreement involved information already archived (or being submitted for archiving) to the consortium members and data formats (i.e., digital) already being used for managing that information. While developing a master database to incorporate all participants’ data, the Consortium has held regular meetings to solicit input from potential users in federal, state, local, tribal, and private agencies. Meeting participants have raised concerns about security, access, quality, and intellectual property rights for this information. All of these concerns have been addressed by the consortium during the development of the AZSITE Cultural Resources Inventory over the past four years and many have been solved to the satisfaction of all concerned.

One set of concerns that has not yet been resolved involves information about archaeological and historic sites and surveys on tribal lands, that was archived and managed by consortium member institutions/agency prior to the formation of the AZSITE Consortium. Specifically, these concerns involve who should have access to these data, who should decide questions of access, and where and in what ways these data should be managed. Further, information about tribal sites and surveys have differing kinds of importance for different constituencies. For example, this information includes:

information maintained and augmented, and often compiled, through the time and effort of the staffs of the institution/agency where they were originally archived;

information needed by the Historic Preservation Office to fulfill statutory obligations;

information comprising the cultural heritage of Native American tribes;

information collection paid for and/or permitted by federal (i.e., non-tribal) agencies;

and research data for scientists studying the human past.

Furthermore, under Federal and State laws this information is deemed worthy of protection because it comprises the legacy of the human past important to all people. Several of these different constituencies have made at least informal claims of intellectual property rights over this information. These concerns have been the topic of numerous discussions between the consortium members, representatives of government agencies, tribal representatives, and other interested parties. Given the remaining concerns about sites and surveys on tribal lands, the AZSITE Consortium felt it wise to issue a policy statement outlining the consensus arrived at after several years of discussing this issue.

In establishing a policy toward information from archaeological and historic sites and surveys on tribal lands, the AZSITE Consortium has followed several guiding principals.

The AZSITE Consortium is fundamentally an agreement and mechanism for sharing data among the member institutions/agency and disseminating it to relevant users (i.e., the AZSITE Cultural Resources Inventory). Hence, it does not have basis, legal or otherwise for deciding conflicting claims of intellectual hegemony over information contributed by the consortium members. Such claims are most appropriately settled at the level of the particular member institution or agency which originally archived and managed relevant data--often for decades.

The AZSITE Consortium has no statutory obligation to share or not share site and historic sites data with other institutions, and no statutory obligation to consult with any land manager about access policies to information about archaeological and historic sites and surveys on the land for which the manager is responsible.

Nevertheless, the AZSITE Consortium has come to a consensus agreement that it is to the benefit of land managers, users, and data contributors if the information made available in the AZSITE Cultural Resources Inventory is, to the extent possible, present with the common consent of the contributors and those responsible for the land on which the relevant sites are located.

The AZSITE Consortium does not have the legal authority to enforce cultural resource statutes or compel AZSITE users to comply with such statutes. However, it can prevent access to the Cultural Resources Inventory to any users misusing the information from the inventory in violation of a signed user agreement, or? of any applicable statutes, or in contravention of the purposes for which the information was compiled and shared by the member institutions/agency.

The AZSITE Consortium members contributed information from their own institutions/agency in good faith, for the benefit of the broader user constituency, often at considerable expense, and with the expectation that their own access to these same data would not be restricted.

Policy

With express, official tribal permission, the AZSITE Consortium will manage and make available to approved AZSITE users information about archaeological and historic properties on tribal land in Arizona. The AZSITE Consortium is highly concerned for the preservation of all cultural resources and will manage any information about tribal sites with the same care that it affords information about archaeological and historic places on other lands. The AZSITE Consortium is not currently able to manage or make available such site information from tribal lands in a manner different from other site information.

Without express, official tribal permission, the AZSITE Consortium will not make available to AZSITE users via the AZSITE Cultural Resource Inventory information about sites on tribal lands.

Currently, for technological and security reasons, all pre-existing (i.e., "legacy") data on historic and archaeological sites contributed by members of the AZSITE Consortium has been (and is still being) loaded into a master holding database for checking and data cleaning prior to making it available in the AZSITE Cultural Resource Inventory. Any such pre-existing information about historic and archaeological properties on tribal lands will not be transferred to the AZSITE Cultural Resources Inventory without express, official tribal approval. Nor will it be deleted from this holding database without an agreement to do so between the tribe and the contributing institution or agency.

The AZSITE Cultural Resource Inventory comprises shared information contributed by AZSITE Consortium members, and all AZSITE Consortium institutions potentially have access to the master holding database. Access to any cultural resource information maintained internally by a member institution is governed by the policies of that institution and all applicable state and federal statutes. Hence, each AZSITE Consortium member will not release information in the holding database contributed by other member institutions, to the extent that it can be determined, about archaeological and historic sites on tribal lands without the express permission of the source institution or agency.

Because a single, central database affords greater security and permits more effective management and preservation of cultural resources, the AZSITE Consortium encourages Arizona tribes to contribute information on historic and archaeological properties to the AZSITE Cultural Resources Inventory. For tribes who may choose to manage such information themselves, the current standards and data structures of the AZSITE Cultural Resources Inventory are open and freely available.

However, it is not the responsibility of the AZSITE Consortium to ensure compatibility between the AZSITE Cultural Resources Inventory and cultural resources data sets independently maintained by tribes or other institutions. Nor is it the responsibility of the AZSITE Consortium to ensure that data not contributed to the AZSITE Cultural Resources Inventory is made available to local, state, or federal agencies responsible for compliance with statues and regulations pertaining to cultural resource management.