Current Department of Defense (DoD) and U.S. Army guidance on cultural resource management on military installations recommends that installation resource managers develop predictive locational models of prehistoric and historic archaeological sites in support of their ICRMP. Guidance for developing the ICRMP is provided in DoD Instruction 4715.3, Army Regulation 200-4, and DA Pamphlet 200-4. Predictive archaeological modeling falls under the rubric of the "planning level survey" for archaeological resources. During the planning level survey, the known archaeological resources on the installation are assessed and their density and location are projected onto unsurveyed areas to help cultural resource managers in planning. Typically, these projections are expressed in probabilistic terms and are displayed visually in a Geographic Information System (GIS) environment. DoD Instruction 4715.3 (p12) states: "the cultural resources inventory of archeological resources should include, at a minimum, the analysis, identification, and prioritization of all potential archeological locations on the installation and verification of the presence or absence of archeological resources in all areas that might be adversely impacted by military activities." Thus the planning of future archaeological inventory surveys and site assessments should be predicated on knowledge of where pertinent resources are likely to be found, as well as on the degree to which they might be impacted by military training and other land use activities.
Compliance with historic preservation legislation governing archaeological resources presents a number of difficulties for military installations. Installations typically have large landholdings, the majority of which has yet to be surveyed for the purpose of identifying and assessing archaeological resources. Managing these unsurveyed lands and planning for future compliance becomes a guessing game in which little or no information is available to help make sound and justifiable decisions regarding land clearance or resource protection. The fiscal and manpower requirements for complying with existing historic preservation legislation are especially burdensome for installations with large military training efforts.
Today, only 30 percent of military lands have been surveyed for archaeological resources. Current survey strategies are often inefficient, do not incorporate three-dimensional search procedures, and do not prioritize study areas based on the likelihood of finding or not finding archaeological sites. For the large tracts of unsurveyed lands, no reliable basis exists for evaluating potential impacts to resources from military training exercises and other land use activities. As the authors of the 1994 Andrulis Report on user requirements of the U.S. Army Conservation Pillar noted, "...[T]he need exists to improve the effectiveness of pedestrian survey for archaeological sites. Lessons learned during the past ten years suggest that predictive models based on geomorphological data can improve the efficiency of archaeological surveys. The development of such models would allow the bypassing of land where the chances of finding cultural resources are low, allowing concentration of scarce resources on areas of high probability."
The ability to identify probable areas of archaeological resource occurrence during the planning stages of military training and construction projects would provide cultural resource specialists with a powerful management tool. Not only would it allow for more efficient planning and timely execution of the archaeological inventory survey process, it would also provide crucial information needed to justify the avoidance of intensive land use practices such as military training on archaeologically sensitive areas. When faced with large tracts of unsurveyed lands, however, installation resource managers often have no way of prioritizing the landscape in terms of either the likelihood of finding archaeological resources or the likelihood that those resources will be impacted by military training and other land-use activities.
A sound predictive model together with a geomorphological assessment of local landscape dynamics can provide the installation resource manager with a powerful GIS-based decision support framework for both immediate and long-range management decisions regarding archaeological resources. Benefits of a modeling/assessment process include more efficient and cost-effective archaeological survey planning and execution, enhanced training readiness (by reducing the likelihood of unanticipated archaeological discoveries and by flagging potentially adverse impacts), and enhanced compliance capabilities and long-term stewardship.