Lone Mountain Archaeological Services
FORT BLISS SITES
The U.S. Army base at Fort Bliss comprises large tracts of land in Texas and New Mexico, including portions of Otero Mesa, the Tularosa Basin, and the El Paso area of west Texas. Almost 15,000 years of human activity are documented at Fort Bliss, ranging from Late Pleistocene hunting and gathering to historic military activity. Lone Mountain is one of several firms with an ongoing multi-year contract to conduct cultural resource management projects for the U.S. Army on Fort Bliss. So far, the data collected has shed light on everyday life and its broader processes, such as changing subsistence strategies, settlement patterns, and material culture. The Tularosa Basin happens to be an extremely rich archaeological area.
Working with a government agency affords Lone Mountain the opportunity to use the latest technologies, constantly improving field procedures and survey methods using field computers, GPS, digital photography, down-hole magnetometry, Transect Recording Unit (TRU) survey methodology, and GIS. We do in-house analysis, including soils analysis, in our own lab. Our Geoarchaeology program is integral to all of our work at Fort Bliss. We are among the first to use down-hole magnetometers in the field, and are currently compiling a library of feature signatures in order to calibrate the downhole magnetometer for improved efficiency in testing for and analyzing features. This will enable archaeologists to make immediate interpretations and timely decisions regarding the necessity for further testing. Lone Mountain is the first to bring GPS, TRU, and PDA technologies together, enabling field crews to conduct paperless surveys. Lone Mountain holds seminars in which we share these innovations with others in the CRM field, benefiting the entire discipline of Southwestern archaeology. We are currently developing TRU technology so that on-site analysis and interpretation of feature signatures will be possible in the field.
Click on the links at left for examples of some recent projects that Lone Mountain has conducted on Fort Bliss.
