INTRODUCTION

In 1995, three state agencies and one private museum signed a memorandum of
agreement that created the AZSITE Consortium, with the multi-year goal to
computerize and share electronically archaeological and historical site files for the
State of Arizona. The AZSITE Consortium goals are detailed in Table 1. In 2006,
Governor’s Executive Order 2006-03 named the Consortium, and the original
four founding agencies (see Table 2) as the official decision making and planning
body within Arizona’s Executive Branch for the AZSITE database and GIS
inventory of Arizona’s historical and archaeological properties.
Table 1. AZSITE Goals
• To serve as Arizona’s inventory of known historic and archaeological cultural
resources.
• To provide information about cultural resource surveys and projects for
historic and archaeological sites and surveys.
• To assist state and local agencies to meet federal and state mandates.
• To serve as a tool for preservation of resources through planning, for the
review of projects for compliance with federal and state preservation
legislation, and as a research tool for qualified researchers.
• To provide data for improved review of state agency planning processes.
• To provide security for data related to location of archaeological sites.
Table 2. Signatory agencies to the 1995 Memorandum of
Agreement, predecessor to Executive Order 2006-03
• Arizona State Museum (University of Arizona)
• Department of Anthropology (now the School of Human
Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University)
• Museum of Northern Arizona
• State Historic Preservation Office (Arizona State Parks)
A Brief History of AZSITE – Arizona’s Cultural Resource Inventory
Following it’s creation in 1995, the Consortium spent several years in planning
and meeting with private, state, federal, tribal, and municipal land use planners,
archaeologists, and cultural resource managers to consider what type of
information the database needed to include and who should have access to it. It
was quickly clear that archaeological and historical site data were maintained in
over two dozen municipal, state, federal, and private agencies across the state
and that a centralized database would need to be electronic and internet
accessible, that it needed to be very secure to protect sensitive archaeological
information and that it would have to be based on a fee for service and no single
agency had the necessary funding. The planning phase itself was funded by
grants from federal and state agencies (see Table 3). The database went on-line
in 1998, as a test product. Private contract agencies quickly began to apply to use
it, even though data were not complete, and were willing to pay for the services
electronic data could offer. Initially the database held records from the Arizona

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State Museum, Arizona State University, and the Museum of Northern Arizona.
Data from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and from the State
Historic Preservation Office were soon added. In 2000, AZSITE began charging
for access to the database. Over the past several years, AZSITE has developed a
funding base that includes annual user fees and grants from federal and state
agencies that covers on-going development of the system and annual operating
expenses for staff, equipment, software licenses, and travel (see Table 4).
Table 3. Planning Phase Grants
• National Center for Preservation Training and
Technology (NPS)
• Federal Geographic Data Committee
• Transportation Enhancement Funds (ADOT)
Table 4. On-going Sources of Funding for AZSITE
• Arizona Heritage Funds (Arizona State Parks Board)
• Federal Historic Preservation Fund (ASP/SHPO)
• U.S. Bureau of Land Management
• AZSITE user fees
• Arizona State Museum records repository fees
Consortium Structure Under Executive Order 2006-03
The Executive Order created an Executive Management Board (Board),
comprised of the director (or designee) of the four agencies that manage AZSITE
(see Table 2). The Chair is to be selected from these four agencies on an annual
rotating basis. It also created a Standing Advisory Committee (Advisory
Committee), which may be composed of representatives from the Governor’s
Office, a state agency, a federal agency with an Arizona presence, a tribal
preservation office, and a private cultural resources consulting firm.
Consortium Activities Under Executive Order 2006-03
February - June 2006
• Board met four times to select a chair (see Table 5), draft operating
procedures, and consider issues related to database development and
management.
• Board members took Open Meetings Law training as provided by the state
and the Assistant Attorney General.
• Board worked with SHPO staff to develop the Advisory Committee.
• Board distributed user fees to agencies to support AZSITE functions (staff,
equipment, software licenses, travel).
July 2006 – June 2007
• Advisory Committee met for the first time in October and elected a chair (see
Table 4), drafted operating procedures, and developed a list of topics that
they would like the Board to address.
• Consortium Board prepared and mailed letters to state agencies and tribal
chairs announcing the Executive Order.
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Board and Advisory Committee both addressed issues of determining and
recording archaeological site boundaries
• Board distributed user fees to agencies to support AZSITE functions (staff,
equipment, software licenses, travel).
• Board finalized interagency service agreement amongst the three state
agencies specifying distribution of duties related to database management.
• On direction of Board database manager developed plans for data sensitivity
maps, per request from Governor’s Growth Initiative.
• Advisory Committee requested Board to consider closer collaboration with
Governor’s Archaeological Advisory Committee.
July 2007 – June 2008
• Board and Advisory Committee reviewed plans for Growth Initiative
sensitivity maps that went on-line in fall, 2007.
• Advisory Committee discussed potential for and difficulties with
collaboration with U.S. Forest Service to incorporate their data into AZSITE.
• Board distributed user fees to agencies to support AZSITE functions (staff,
equipment, software licenses, travel).
• At request of Advisory Committee, Board issued data sharing protocols to
guide archaeological contractors in working with their clients in a way that
will not compromise data security.
July 2008 – June 2009
• On the recommendation of the Advisory Board, the Board discussed and planned to
initiate new consultation meetings with Tribes on AZSITE activities and upgrades.
• Advisory Committee Bylaws were reviewed and updated.
• Advisory Committee and Board reviewed and set priorities for AZSITE system
improvements.
• The advisory Committee and the Board reviewed and commented on a draft data
sharing guidance document.
• Advisory Committee and Board reviewed plans for the uploading of Phoenix Basin
Canal Maps.
•

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Table 5. Membership of the Board and Advisory Committee
CY Year Executive Management Board
Standing Advisory
Committee
• Beth Grindell, Arizona State
• Scott Kwiatkowski, Yavapai
2006
Museum, Chair
Prescott Indian Tribe, Chair
• Robert Breunig, Museum of
• James Cogswell,
Northern Arizona
• Katherine Neustadt, ADOT
• C. Michael Barton, Arizona State • Lori Faeth, Governor’s Office
University
• James Garrison, State Historic
Preservation Office
• Carol Griffith, State Historic
• Scott Kwiatkowski, Yavapai
2007
Preservation Office, Chair
Prescott Indian Tribe, Chair
• Beth Grindell, Arizona State
• James Cogswell,
Museum
• Katherine Neustadt, ADOT
• Robert Breunig, Museum of
• Lori Faeth, Governor’s Office
Northern Arizona
• C. Michael Barton, Arizona State
University
• C. Michael Barton, Arizona State • James Cogswell, Chair
2008
University, Chair
• Scott Kwiatkowski, Yavapai
• Robert Breunig, Museum of
Prescott Indian Tribe
Northern Arizona
• Jeremy Haines, U.S.F.S.
• Carol Griffith, State Historic
• Katherine Neustadt, ADOT
Preservation Office
• Lori Faeth, Governor’s Office
• Beth Grindell, Arizona State
• Barnaby Lewis, Gila River
Museum
Indian Community
• C. Michael Barton, Arizona State • Scott Kwiatkowski, Yavapai
2009
University, Chair
Prescott Indian Tribe, Chair
• Robert Breunig, Museum of
• Jeremy Haines, U.S.F.S., Vice
Northern Arizona
Chair
• Carol Griffith, State Historic
• Barnaby Lewis, Gila River
Preservation Office
Indian Community
• Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman,
Arizona State Museum
Recent Database Usage
At the end of fiscal year 2009, the AZSITE database contained 83,127 records. The
majority are archaeological sites but a substantial minority are historic properties
(buildings, railroads, telegraph, etc.). The website receives on the average 87
“hits” per day from users who are checking data on-line. In addition to
reviewing data on-line, users may request downloaded data sets that they may
then incorporate into their planning documents. The number of user
agreements issued to private archaeological firms and state and federal agencies
has increased every year as has the number of users (employees with passwords
to access the data). Table 6 details the number of user agreements, individual
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users, and electronic data requests over the past three years. Table 7 provides
information on the breakdown of user agreements by agency type. By far the
largest number of user agreements is provided to private companies that are
usually archaeological consulting firms or engineering firms with archaeologists
on staff. State and federal agencies are also finding the database useful.
Table 6. Database Users and Data Requests
Fiscal
# User
Total # # Requests for
Year
Agreements
Users
Data
Issued
2006 (6 mo.)
73
242
278
2007
77
257
334
2008
83
278
263
2009
74
260
242
Table 7. Details on User Agreements by Institution Type
Fiscal
# Private
# State &
# Federal
Year
Companies
Local
Agencies
Agencies
2006 (6 mo.)
50
6
9
2007
49
8
10
2008
54
7
11
2009
47
7
10

# Tribal
Agencies
2
2
3
3

#
Educational
Institutions
6
8
8
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AZSITE Funding
AZSITE users are required to pay user fees for access to the database. The fees
are graduated; depending on the number of users an institution wishes to have
access to the database. They range from $750 per annum for one to three users,
$1,500 per annum for four to nine users, and $3,000 per annum for ten or more
users. The income from these fees is detailed in Figure 1. It does not cover the
full expenses of running AZSITE and each of the four managing institutions
contributes staff and operations funds annually, as well as occasional grant funds.
Table 8 provides operating expenses, by agency, for FY 2008. User fees cover
close to 30% of the costs. Member agencies and annual funding from the U.S.
Bureau of Land Management provide the remaining expenses.

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Table 8. AZSITE Operations Budget, FY 2008-2009

Agency
Arizona State Museum
Arizona State University, ISSR
Arizona State University, School of
Human Evolution and Social Change
State Historic Preservation Office

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Personnel
$162,967

Budget Item
Travel Operations Total Expenses
$4,579
$17,098
$184,644

$19,950

$19,950

$4,000

$4,000

$42,080

$1,707

$43,787

Total Expenses
$228,997 $4,579
$18,805
$252,381
1 $30,000 of expenses funded by the BLM under national programmatic agreement with SHPO

Conclusions and Priorities for the Next Year
The AZSITE consortium is an outstanding example of successful collaboration to
provide important public services the citizens of the state of Arizona. The
voluntary cooperation among the consortium members has produced one of the
most sophisticated, accessible, and secure digital archives of archaeological and
historic information in the country. The AZSITE digital archive is used by
hundreds of professionals, in private, local, state, and federal institutions to help
preserve Arizona’s cultural heritage. Over the life of the consortium, and
continuing after Executive Order 2006-03, AZSITE has consistently improved the
quality of the cultural resource data it makes available as well as the ease of
accessing this data to qualified users.
The system is highly efficient, but still incurs a number of inherent costs. There
are personnel, hardware, and software costs of maintaining the data and web
server needed to store and deliver cultural resource information. There are
continuing personnel cost needed for verifying and uploading new
archaeological and historic sites information submitted to the archive by
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professionals carrying out cultural resource management activities in compliance
with state and federal laws. Finally, there are personnel costs needed to convert
into digital format the paper records from nearly a century of archaeological and
historic research in the state.
Clearly, maintaining and improving the data and web servers that store
AZSITE’s data and make is accessible to others is a top priority. However, to
make the system more effective and useful for managing Arizona’s cultural
resources, it is imperative that archaeological and historic resources discovered
and documented in ongoing projects be rapidly uploaded to the archive to avoid
duplication of effort by different agencies and private companies. It is equally
important to enter and upload pre-existing paper records to the new digital
archive. Entering all known archaeological and historic properties into the
archive will better help to preserve Arizona’s cultural resources, and avoid the
costly delays and remedial work that is required when such properties are
encountered during public or private construction activities.
An important priority for the board in the coming year will be to review funding
sources for the AZSITE archive. User fees have been kept modest since the
founding of the archive in order to make this information as widely accessible to
qualified users as possible. However, current user fees are not even sufficient to
support maintenance of the database and servers that now exist, and the
consortium members contribute considerable staff resources to keep the system
running. It is important that the AZSITE archive continue to grow to include all
known archaeological and historic properties in the state. This will require a
considerably larger funding base than is now available for the system.
Ideally, there should be direct public funding to augment user fees and help the
consortium members continue to deliver this important information service to
qualified users in Arizona. Additionally, the federal and state land managing
agencies—whose missions benefit by the maintenance of a statewide archive of
archaeological and historic properties—should share in the financial support of
this system. The Bureau of Land Management contributes $25,000 annually to
support AZSITE, but other state and federal agencies only pay a few hundred
dollars per year for user access. We will seek ways to increase public support
and system improvements that benefit the public. Additionally, we plan to
review the cost structure of user fees—both in terms of the base costs and the
kinds of user agreements made available.
An important reason for seeking to improve the funding base of the AZSITE
archive is to enter the large backlog of archaeological and historic properties that
are known but not in the archive. The reason for this backlog is primarily the
lack of funds to hire needed personnel. As the technical components of the
system have reached maturity, improving the quality and quantity of data in the
archive will take on an increasingly higher priority.

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Finally, we seek to address an important management issue in the coming year.
The AZSITE board functions well. But an important component of Executive
Order 2006-03 was the establishment of an Advisory Committee to provide a
formal way for the larger community of cultural resource professionals and the
general public to offer advice to the board. The Advisory Committee has been
very active and helpful. But its activities have been limited by the difficulty in
achieving full membership on the committee according to Executive Order 200603. We plan to work with the Governor’s office (who appoints the Advisory
Committee) to find ways to expedite the appointment of members to this
committee so that it can better fulfill its role in advising the board.

This document was compiled by Arizona State Parks, State Historic Preservation Office.
For more information call 602-542-4174.

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