OCR Text |
Show Issues and a Proposal sites, buildings, structures, and objects in order to facilitate future preservation planning. The category at its broadest level-properties-is well known, and a variety of prehistoric cultural categories and historical and stylistic architectural categories have been established. The surveyor's task is the identification of specific instances. Although the Grouse Creek project was intended to be a prototype of an integrated cultural survey, its underlying structure was not entirely clear in the field. Like most human endeavors, some aspects of the Grouse Creek work were shaped on the run. The next few paragraphs will outline the ideal integrated survey that emerged during the post-fieldwork evaluation. Phase I. Preliminary Research and Fieldwork Planning. This phase consists of archival research, a preliminary field visit, and creation of a research plan. This phase assembles background historical and cultural information. Since the field investigation will incorporate interviews, the archival research should examine available demographic information in order to determine a reasonable cross-section of people for interviewing. Since the interviews will identify a wide range of cultural features, this phase should also develop a checklist of cultural features to be used in the initial series of interviews and a list of expected property types to guide the study of the built environment and the identification of historic structures. Finally, the preliminary planning phase includes drafting preliminary statements of historic and cultural contexts, which will be refined or modified during the field investigation. Phase II. The Field Investigation. The fieldwork phase consists of two separately organized portions: an architectural survey and a folklife survey. The architectural survey begins with a reconnaisance of the entire area in order to provide a broad picture of the types and styles of buildings and the character of various neighborhoods, and subsequently identifies significant buildings and sites and documents them in detail. The documentation should be thorough enough to permit registration in the National Register or a state or local equivalent. Many useful procedures and suggestions for such surveys are provided in Guidelines for Local Surveys (U.S. Department of the Interior 1985). The folklife survey covers both tangible and intangible cultural features. Although many forms of field research, especially those with ethnography as a goal, combine observing and interviewing, the compass of a survey project allows only a small amount of observation and demands extensive use of the interview. Thus the first portion of the folklife survey consists of a round of interviews with persons who match the cross-section of the population developed during the research design. Acquaintances made during a visit to a local official, store, or public event will introduce the researcher to others, and soon a group for interviewing may be selected. A study of cultural heritage-especially a survey to be conducted in a short time span-will benefit from interviews with persons who are knowledgeable and articulate; thus the sample should not be selected at random. |