Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan Proposed Land
DRECP Proposed LUPA and Final EIS CHAPTER III.8. CULTURAL RESOURCES III.8 CULTURAL RESOURCES This chapter presents the Affected Environment for the Land Use Plan Amendment (LUPA) Decision Area and the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP) area for cultural resources. These areas overlap, and in the following programmatic discussion are referred to broadly as the “California Desert Region.” More than 32,000 cultural resources are known in the DRECP area in every existing environmental context ⎼ from mountain crests to dry lake beds ⎼ and include both surface and subsurface deposits. Cultural resources are categorized as buildings, sites, structures, objects, and districts (including cultural landscapes and Traditional Cultural Properties) under the federal National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). Historic properties are cultural resources included in, or eligible for inclusion in, the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), maintained by the Secretary of the Interior (36 Code of Federal Regulations [CFR] 60.4). See Section III.8.1.1 for more information on federal regulations and historic properties. This chapter discusses three types of cultural resources classified by their origins: prehistoric, ethnographic, and historic. Prehistoric cultural resources are associated with the human occupation of California prior to prolonged European contact. These resources may include sites and deposits, structures, artifacts, rock art, trails, and other traces of Native American human behavior. In California, the prehistoric period began over 12,000 years ago and extended through the eighteenth century until 1769, when the first Europeans settled in California. Ethnographic resources represent the heritage of a particular ethnic or cultural group, such as Native Americans or African, European, Latino, or Asian immigrants.
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