Cultural Resources Evaluation of the Vandenberg Air Force Base Security Clear Zones, Santa Barbara County, California. Volume I.

An intensive survey and limited testing program was conducted within the Security Clear Zones of six small military installations on Vandenberg Air Force Base, Santa Barbara County, California. The purpose of the work was 1 to locate, record, and evaluate archaeological sites in terms of National Register significance, and 2 to provide mitigation alternatives that would aid in avoiding adverse impacts at known sites in the course of by-annual brush clearing around the military installations. No previously unrecorded sites were identified, however, four known seasonally occupied prehistoric sites dating from approximately 6,000 B.C. to A.D. 1,500 were investigated and evaluated. It was confirmed that site SBa-1127 was located outside the project impact area. Another site, SBa-537, had been totally destroyed years earlier by construction within the right-of-way. The upper depositional contexts of SBa-793 and 917 were so extensively disturbed by historic construction that there is little integrity in terms of National Register Eligibility criteria. In another areas of these two sites, intact subsurface deposits are suspected but were not documented. The report concludes with recommendations for brush clearing looting control, rodent control, and the handling of isolated and disturbed surface archaeological materials.