Condition Assessment and Intensive Survey for Lake Lucero

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The site for this project is located along the western edge of White Sands National Monument overlooking the Lake Lucero playa, within the deposits of Pleistocene Lake Otero. Numerous visits to the site have been made over the past few decades both as professional investigations and avocational tours. Yet, despite its great research potential, its spatial extent has not been completely documented, nor have all of its cultural features been fully recognized. During a recent visit to the site, a series of adobe room blocks were identified on the ground surface. Additionally, areas of extremely high artifact density indicated the presence of probable buried features such as pithouses, thermal features, trash middens and even human burials. A systematic survey of the Lake Lucero Site is urgently needed to enable White Sands National Monument to properly manage and protect the site. The cultural and temporal evaluations of these resources will be based on the associations of these resources with diagnostic artifacts (such as projectile points and ceramics), as viewed in their cultural and environmental contexts. For this project, the recipient will locate and record the site, assess site condition, and determine site significance. Correlating the temporal information with paleoenvironmental data, where available, might allow for an examination of long-term changes in the biotic communities. The collected data will be synthesized in a report with recommendations for the preservation of this site. The information gathered will form a baseline for future condition assessments of this site, further recommendations for site preservation and additional project planning.

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