RELEVANT TERMS GLOSSARY

Pre-contact or historic remains, or indicators of past human activities, including artifacts, sites, structures, landscapes, and objects of importance to a culture or community for scientific, traditional, religious, or other reasons.

The development and maintenance of programs designed to investigate, manage, preserve, and protect cultural resources in compliance with state and federal laws. 

Anything 50 years of age or greater is considered historic.

Any cultural resource listed in or eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. This includes a variety of resource types such as historic and prehistoric archaeological sites, houses, historic districts, engineering features such as roadbeds, railways, or bridges, battlefields, historic and cultural landscapes, and traditional cultural properties.

Refers to the time period prior to European Contact in the United States. Also sometimes referred to as aboriginal or indigenous. Previously referred to as pre-historic, however this term is no longer preferred as it implies that the people present during that time do not have a history, which we know to not be true; the early peoples of the Americas had vibrant, long standing, and well- documented histories that have been preserved in oral traditions and cultural items, as well as archaeological sites.

Cultural aspects of the environment — for example, cultural uses of the natural environment, the built environment, and human social institutions – interpreted comprehensively to include the natural and physical (built) environment and the relationship of people with that environment. This term is featured in NEPA legislation.

Cultural Resource Assessment Survey- typically a Phase I Survey (see our Archaeology page).

Area of Potential Effects- geographic area or areas within which an undertaking may directly or indirectly cause alterations in the character or use of historic properties, if any such properties exist.

Effects that cause alterations in the character or use of historic properties, typically considered to include physical destruction of, or damage to, all or part of a historic property; alteration of a historic property in a way that is not consistent with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties and applicable guidelines; or the removal of the property from its historic location. Many Local and State agencies utilize this definition, however, the 2019 DC circuit court ruling in National Parks Conservation Association v. Semonite shifted or expanded this definition to consider the causality, and not the physicality, of the effect to historic properties. Thus, if the effect comes from the undertaking at the same time and place with no intervening cause, it is considered “direct” regardless of its specific type (e.g., whether it is visual, physical, auditory, etc.). Therefore, in project with federal review this expanded definition is considered.

Visual, auditory, and/or atmospheric impacts that may result from a proposed undertaking. Indirect effects may be either permanent or temporary in nature. As with direct effects this is the standard definition used by most local and state review agencies. However, similarly, the 2019 DC circuit court ruling in National Parks Conservation Association v. Semonite shifted or expanded this definition to consider the causality, indicating that indirect effects to historic properties are those caused by the undertaking that are later in time or further removed in distance but are still reasonably foreseeable.