Federal Archaeological Programs

There are three main categories that the federal archaeological programs fall under. These categories are land/resource management, development, and regulation. Land/resource management involves agencies that conduct archeological activities as part of their responsibility for managing the lands. Development agencies are responsible for modern development projects such as highways and sewer. Regulatory agencies require archaeological activities for a third party to obtain Federal assistance. In total, there are forty-three agencies that fund archaeological activities. Twenty-one are land/resource managers, nine are development agencies, and 20 are regulatory.

These forty-three agencies spend over $75 million annually, to conduct programs. The money is spent on literature searches, field surveys, data recovery, law enforcement, and public education about our nation's archaeological resources. The Federal Highway Administration is a major funding agency. Literature searches accounts for 23% of the total spending each year. Some $17,500,000 is spent by the various agencies. Of that, the Federal Highway Administration accounted for 51%. Land/resource management agencies totaled 80% of the spending on the searches. Most of these projects involved three agencies, the Forest Service (FS), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Data recovery accounted for 25% of total spending, nearly $19,100,00. Most of these activities were conducted by government staff.

Land/resource management agencies accounted for 75% of the spending. Again most of these activities were conducted by FS, BLM, BIA. Development agencies accounted for 23% of the spending on data recovery. Interestingly enough is the fact that most of the data recovery was done by agency staffers, but most of the money was spent on contracting this work out. Only 1% of the total expenditure is on regulatory issues. There were 657 incidents of looting last year. This resulted in $13,000 in fines that were collected. Vandalism cost a little over $100,000, the majority of that came from the Forest Service. In all there was a total of $940,000 spent on archeological resource protection. The government employs 5036 law enforcement officials, 517 archeologists, and 818 "others", who are designated to protect these resources. Educating the public on our nations archaeological resources cost $136,000. To do this they distributed some 2.5 million bookmarks. Also, a video concerning the archeological resources was made.

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