Past, Present, and Future: Cultural Heritage Management on the Chattahoochee - Oconee National Forests

This volume serves two functions. First, it is a status report to show the cultural heritage activities the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests have conducted over the past 16 years. It demonstrates that this Forest is complying with both the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). We are conducting cultural resource inventories prior to undertakings which might either disturb those resources or in the case of land exchanges, alienate them from Federal management responsibility. The report also presents a research design outline with methods and techniques for conducting cultural heritage inventories and surveys on the Forests, along with management needs to carry out the overall Heritage Program of cultural resources on the Chattahoochee-Oconee. Second, this is the second edition of the Cultural Heritage Overview for these Forests. The first was written in 1982, and this one leans heavily on it in places. However, there has been a great deal of cultural heritage and other archaeological research done in the intervening 10 years in north Georgia, on and off the National Forests. It was done by Forest Service archaeologists and by others in the professional community, universities, contractors, and highly motivated amateur volunteers, to advance knowledge of history and prehistory in northern Georgia, and to manage those nonrenewable resources. The Forest Service and the American public will benefit from those efforts for years to come. The Overview includes an outline of what has been done, what types of sites were found here, what others are expected, in what types of environments and in what densities they should be found. These elements provide a site location strategy for heritage resource surveys. Appendix I includes abstracts from the reports completed between mid 1982 and late 1993, for future reference. These were, for the most part, copied directly from the reports themselves, so the authors of the reports are the authors of the abstracts. Appendix II contains copies of the Programmatic Agreement between the US Forest Service, the Georgia State Historic Preservation Office, and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, and the Memorandum of Understanding between the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests and the Georgia SHPO. This is the basis for a Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. Forest Service, the Georgia State Historic Preservation Office, and the President's Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, as directed by the 1992 Programmatic Agreement among these agencies. It outlines the Forest Service's compliance processes under NHPA and NEPA.