| Summary: | The management recommendations contained in "Archeological survey of the proposed Grants Creek interceptor sewer, Town of Landis, North Carolina," are based on the nature of a reconnaissance level survey . This type of survey is concerned with field inspection of a unit of land in order to determine the presence/absence o: archeological resources . As such, this "Phase I" survey may be considered a locational inventory -- a necessary first step of resource management. The second step of resource management is to ascertain the significance of the resource. The significance of a site is defined by its information content . Any structured consideration of information logically entails statistical sampling. Thus, a representative data sample from a site (however defined) is necessary in order to evaluate the information, and hence significance, of that site . The site-specific recommendations of the Landis report are concerned with the acquisition of representative (1) spatial information, (2) temporal information, and (3) behavioral information . Adequate data samples relevant to each of these categories are, respectively, (1 ) site boundary definition, (2) recovery o{ temporally diagnostic artifacts , and (3) redundancy in definition of artifact and/or attribute sets . The results of the Phase I Landis reconnaissance indicate two primary situations in which additional data may be profitably recovered i n terms of assessing sites of potential significance. These two cases are (1) sites with buried cultural strata, and (2) sites associated with a tentatively defined system of quartz lithic procurement and tool manufacture . Sites with buried strata may be significant for several reasons. First, buried prehistoric sites are relatively rare in the Piedmont. Second, buried strata afford protection or site information through preservation of material and contextual associations critical to data interpretation.
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