Contracts/Grants Program

Starting in the 1970s, there was a growing need for contract archaeologists and cultural resources management (CRM). The Office of Archaeological Research (OAR) was established in 1972 in response to that growing field. OAR was created as a department of The College of Arts & Sciences and Carey B. Oakley was named as its director. The first contract obtained by OAR was from the TVA to survey the Little Bear Creek Reservoir in Northwest Alabama (Oakley and Futato 1976). Another TVA contract, obtained in 1973, negotiated the excavation of the Bellefonte site in the Guntersville Basin (Futato 1977). During the 1970s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began planning the construction of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway which would impact numerous cultural resources. OAR conducted several survey, testing, and mitigation projects associated with the waterway that produced a multitude of reports (Bense 1982; Caddell et al. 1981; Coblentz 1979; Ensor 1981; Hubbert 1978; Jenkins 1981, 1982; Jenkins and Ensor 1981; Lafferty and Solis 1981; Murphy and Saltus 1981). In addition to large-scale CRM projects, a market for small contracts was being cultivated.

Since its inception, OAR, now part of the University of Alabama Museums, has been successful in conducting archaeological research and cultural resource management. OAR has negotiated contracts funded in excess of ten million dollars. Almost eighty research monographs and thousands of unpublished technical reports have been generated during its 25 years of CRM and archaeological research. Work has been conducted in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as outside the United States in Israel, Mexico, and Guatemala. OAR has performed survey, testing, and mitigation programs associated with waterways, reservoirs, highways, pipelines, methane gas fields, coal mines, landfills, timber harvests, and other developments.

Having been involved in thousands of cultural resource management contracts and grants, it would be difficult to list every project that OAR has been involved in. Here we have provided abstracts of some of our larger and more recent projects. We will continue to add to this list as research continues. Most of the page links now include text but, ultimately, will include photographs, maps, etc.