Data Collection Strategies for Assessing Artifact Zone Spatial and Associational Integrity on Sand Occupational Substrates

A research in CRM settings should be undertaken within a problemoriented research agenda. Expectations regarding the type of data that might be recovered based on limited or no prior testing are often used to justify proposed research questions that may serve to guide excavation for data recovery. Research conducted on subsurface huntergatherer archaeological zones often proposes to investigate the spatial structure of activity areas. Setting aside issues of the complex nature of temporalsequential site use (Binford 1980), it is imperative that archaeologists who propose to analyze activity areas understand and utilize knowledge of site formation processes. Siteformation studies emerged as part of a debate into the relationship between behavioral and geological/soils factors affecting the formation and destruction of sites (Binford 1980; Schiffer 1987). Numerous experimental studies were conducted as part of a research agenda directed toward understanding the effect of natural and cultural siteformation processes on the structure of the archaeological record and subsequent interpretations of that record (Schiffer 1978; Wood and Johnson 1978). Many of these studies borrowed from the principles of sedimentology, including particle (i.e., artifact) transport in various depositional environments, as well as from knowledge of taphonomic processes. These approaches have been applied in archaeological contexts mostly by academic archaeologists. CRM research designs