Ideally, EIA is initiated very early in the process of planning a project, when it is possible to explore multiple alternative ways of fulfilling a given need (e. g., the need for safe transportation between city A
Figure 1 EIA archaeology assesses and deals with the impacts of modern developments like railroads, highways, reservoirs and housing on archaeological sites. Photo by the author.
And city B, or the need for irrigation water in Agricultural Zone X). Unfortunately, EIA is sometimes delayed until later in planning - sometimes so late that it becomes effectively meaningless, because key decisions have been made and alternatives have been foreclosed. When the system is working properly, however, the EIA begins when the project and its alternatives have been only roughly sketched out. At this early stage, the government agencies or other parties responsible for the EIA undertake scoping to determine what types of analysis to perform. Scoping involves establishing the geographic areas within which studies of the environment will be undertaken - the lands through which a highway or railroad is planned, for example, or the valley that may be flooded by a reservoir or turned over by mining. It also includes doing background research to determine what is already known about such areas and about the impacts of the kind of project under study, and consultation with government agencies, experts, and stakeholders. The result is a plan and schedule for the EIA research, and the selection of study team members.
Often scoping reveals that archaeological sites may be affected by the proposed action - perhaps flooded, bulldozed, blown up, or more subtly damaged through changes in land use, increased public access to sensitive areas, and similar factors. Sometimes background research indicates that important archaeological sites are known or suspected in the area; in other cases there may be no data on archaeology at all, or such data as do exist may be unreliable, making further study necessary. There may also be the potential for impacts on places and other resources that are not strictly archaeological but are culturally or historically important - perhaps living communities, important subsistence resources, or areas regarded by local people as having spiritual significance. Determining how these places may be affected often requires research by historians, architects, landscape specialists, or anthropologists, as well as careful discussions with local people. Other research commonly done as part of EIA includes studies of the area’s geography, ecology, water and air quality, water resources, sociology, and economy.
Where the possibility exists that archaeological resources will be damaged or destroyed, archaeological surveys are typically conducted in coordination with the other environmental studies, although the coordination, unfortunately, is not always perfect. Such a survey is similar to what an archaeologist might do for pure research purposes (Figure 2), but its location is dictated by where project effects may occur, and the archaeologist in charge of the work is not free to focus only on the kinds of sites and data in which he or she is interested. Instead, an effort must be made to understand the full nature of the archaeological record that may be destroyed or altered by the project. This requirement to address areas and sites that archaeologists might not choose to examine if
Figure 2 EIA archaeology involves a great deal of field survey and documentation Photo by the author.
Left to their own devices has resulted in some interesting expansions of archaeology’s scope. We have found ourselves examining the archaeological leavings of World War II, for example, the fields and farmsteads of the early twentieth century, and many a nineteenth-or early twentieth-century urban neighborhood. We have also paid more attention to small, relatively unimpressive sites than we might have otherwise, since they may be all we find and they are subject to destruction (Figure 3).
Survey is typically supervised by professional archaeologists, but may be carried out by students, local people, or itinerant archaeological survey specialists. It usually includes further background research, consultation with local residents, and controlled fieldwork - walking, driving, or otherwise going over the land surface looking at it carefully, and sometimes conducting test excavations. It may also require aerial or satellite imaging, underwater remote sensing using side-scan sonar and other exploratory techniques, and studies of the area’S geomorphology - how the landscape has developed and been transformed through time. In urban areas it may require deep excavations in and around standing or recently demolished buildings. The fieldwork is followed by analysis of results, leading to the preparation of descriptive and analytical reports (Figure 4).
The archaeological reports are summarized as part of the EIA’s overall description of the potentially affected environment, along with information on the area’s biology, hydrology, air quality, wetlands, floodplains, sociopolitical systems, and economic structure. The analysts conducting the EIA - sometimes archaeologists, sometimes other specialists, most often groups representing multiple disciplines - then examine how the proposed project is likely to affect whatever has been found. Depending on the requirements of the laws under which the assessment is done, they may examine multiple options for achieving the project’s purposes, seeking an alternative that will achieve those purposes with minimum damage to the environment. They may consult with local residents, specialists, and government bodies that have special expertise or legal jurisdiction, such as cultural ministries or historic preservation agencies. They may commission additional studies to fill gaps in the assessment, or to address topics that come up as the analysis goes forward. Special attention often is given to impacts on the environments of indigenous groups, and of low-income and minority populations.
In most cases the money to support EIA work comes from the project proponent, based on the premise that he who wants to build something, and who presumably will benefit from it, should be responsible for assessing and revealing its impacts. EIA-related work is typically done by nonprofit - or profit-making corporations - sometimes corporations that specialize in the study of particular resources such as archaeological sites, sometimes corporations that conduct a range of planning, environmental study, and even architectural and engineering work. In some countries EIA studies, or their archaeological elements, are carried out by academic institutions or
Figure 3 Nineteenth-century copper processing site in New Mexico, USA. Photo by the author.
Figure 4 EIA archaeologists must also consider buildings and structures associated with relatively recent history, such as this World War II Japanese building, blasted by American bombs and strafing, on Jaluit Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Photo by the author and The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery.
Government agencies, such as cultural ministries in the case of archaeology. Sometimes such agencies are expected to conduct their EIA work using their own budgets, rather than deriving support from project proponents. This arguably increases the independence of their judgments, reducing the influence of the project proponent on the study results, but it can also cause stress on an agency’s budget, and distort its priorities.
The projected level of impacts on archaeological sites alone to convince decision makers to abandon a project, but sometimes such impacts in combination with others - for instance, impacts on threatened and endangered animal and plant species, on water quality, on health and safety, on human communities or on places of contemporary religious or cultural importance - result in a decision that a project cannot go forward.
World History
