The Council of Texas Archeologists is a nonprofit voluntary organization which exists for the purpose of maintaining and promoting the goals of professional archeology in the State of Texas. The Council's goals include promoting and coordinating communication and cooperation within the archeological community; preserving and conserving the cultural resources of Texas; and promoting and disseminating information which enhances public awareness of the limited and nonrenewable nature of these cultural resources.

Membership is open to all persons who are vocationally involved in archeology in Texas and who agree to adhere to these Guidelines and the CTA Code of Ethics. Institutions and individuals may subscribe to the CTA newsletter when not otherwise eligible for CTA membership.

Current officers' addresses may be found in the CTA newsletter or may be acquired from the Office of the State Archeologist, Texas Historical Commission, P.O. Box 12276, Capitol Station, Austin, Texas, 78711, or the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory, The University of Texas at Austin, Balcones Research Center, Austin, Texas, 78712-1100.

The Council believes that it is in the public interest as well as that of the archeological profession to maintain high professional standards for archeology. To that end, any professional archeologist or allied professional who knowingly and willingly violates the essential ethical standards stands to be censured or removed from CTA membership. Any individual or organization that attempts to coerce a professional archeologist or allied professional to violate the standards also stands to be censured or rebuked. Censure or removal from membership in this organization shall follow formal procedures established by the CTA ethics committee.

The Council of Texas Archeologists has formulated these standards to provide a code of self-regulation for those concerned with the archeological profession. These guidelines consist of: (1) essential ethical principles, the violation of which will not be tolerated, (2) advisory guidelines that should not be violated without adequate justification, and (3) general goals toward which all professional work should strive. This document covers three archeological concerns–performance, curation, and reports–each of which is addressed in a separately numbered section. References for the entire document follow the last section.

Because the Guidelines constitute an evolving set of documents,it is necessary to have procedures for proposing and adopting amendments. Minor editorial corrections and/or prefatory material (Cover Page, Preface, Development of the Guidelines, etc.) may be added or updated as needed by the Editing and Review Committee or designated individual(s) when the Guidelines are reissued; recourse to the amendment procedure is not considered necessary or appropriate in such instances.

Where substantive changes to the Guidelines or the Amendment Procedure itself are to be considered, amendments may be initiated by any CTA member in one of the following ways:

1. The amendment is proposed in writing and co-signed by at least 10 other members, then sent directly to the CTA president.

2. The amendment is proposed from the floor of a general meeting and supported by at least 10 other members.

The proposed amendment will be published in two successive issues of the CTA newsletter. The amendment will then be voted on at the next regular meeting, unless an emergency condition exists. In such a case, it may be brought to a vote at a specially-called meeting that fulfills the by-law requirements. Final wording of an amendment may be chosen at the time of adoption. An amendment is passed if approved by two thirds of the current members present and voting at the meeting.

Actions leading to the development of the CTA Guidelines were set in motion at the 1980 Spring meeting. At this time Peter Nichols was appointed Chair of the Ad Hoc Lignite Committee to study problems related to lignite mining, and Kay Killen was appointed coordinator of the 1981 Spring CTA Workshop sessions. These two CTA members and their associates were instrumental in setting the stage for the guidelines work which was to come. Following this meeting, Vol. 4(2) of the CTA newsletter printed possible topics to be discussed at these sessions.

Ad Hoc Lignite Committee (Peter Nichols, Chair)

At the 1980 Fall meeting, Kay Killen proposed sessions which included several guidelines topics:

Peter Nichols and his committee proposed similar topics for committee work:

During the meeting the two sets of topics were meshed, and committees were established to prepare draft reports for the Spring workshop sessions; Kay Killen was chosen to act as Coordinator of Committees. Vol. 4(4) of the newsletter provided some content considerations authored by the original Ad Hoc Committee members. Study committee assignments were based on suggestions from the Ad Hoc Lignite Committee and modifications from the floor. [The Ad Hoc Lignite Committee was subsumed and its goals redirected at this time.]

The committees and their members resulting from the 1980 Fall meeting and listed in CTA newsletter Vol. 4(4) were:

Management Plans (William J. Mayer-Oakes, Coordinator)

Coordination (Judy Van Cleve, Coordinator)

Performance Guidelines (Susan L. Andrews, Coordinator)

Report Standards (Jerry Henderson, Coordinator)

CTA Political Action (Patience E. Patterson, Coordinator)

Curation of Data (Barbara J. Baskin, Coordinator)

Professional Archeological Careers (Richard E. W. Adams, Coordinator)

Avocational Archeologists (Kerza A. Prewitt, Coordinator)

The committee coordinators contacted the recommended members to verify their participation. These committees were then to formulate an outline/guidelines for presentation and discussion at the spring workshops; the completed summaries were distributed to the general membership prior to the 1981 Spring meeting in Vol. 5(1) of the newsletter. The entire document set, which became Draft 1 of the Guidelines, was only sent to major archeological institutions/agencies due to its length and the limited time available for distribution prior to the meeting. Study committees providing summaries in this issue were:

Management Plans (S. Alan Skinner, Coordinator)

Professional Performance Standards (Susan L. Andrews, Coordinator)

Archeological Report Standards (Jerry Henderson, Coordinator)

Coordination (Judy Van Cleve, Coordinator)

Public Affairs (Patience E. Patterson, Coordinator)

Curation of Data (Barbara J. Baskin and Carolyn Spock, Coordinators)

Professional Archeological Careers (Susanna R. Katz, Coordinator)

Avocational Archeologists (Kerza A. Prewitt, Coordinator)

[ ] Did not actively participate in committee meetings at this phase.

The 1981 Spring workshop sessions included a day and a half devoted to reviewing and reworking the drafts submitted by the session organizers. It became apparent to the participants that the reports of the workshop session committees formed the basis of a document which could be used by archeologists as a code of self-regulation. Following the meeting, a second set of reports, now considered to be Draft 2 of the Guidelines, was presented to the membership in Vol. 5(2) of the newsletter. Individual CTA members were asked to submit written comments or amendment suggestions to the committees for review and possible incorporation into the documents. Due to attrition (lack of interest or work obligations, etc.), no reports were available for Public Affairs, Management Plans, or Coordination. Kay Killen continued in the Coordinator of Committees role, working with representatives from the various committees to promote a cohesive and well-integrated manuscript. Committees publishing drafts in this issue were:

Professional Performance Standards (Susan L. Andrews, Coordinator)

Curation Standards and Procedures (Barbara J. Baskin and Carolyn Spock, Coordinators)

Avocational Archeology (Kerza A. Prewitt, Coordinator)

Careers in Texas Archeology (Susanna R. Katz, Coordinator)

Report Standards (Jerry Henderson, Coordinator)

Four separate documents were produced by the Reports Committee:

Section I: Guidelines for the Content of Cultural Resource Management Reports [prepared by James E. Bruseth and J. Peter Thurmond]

Section II: Guidelines for Format and Style in Cultural Resource Report Preparation; [prepared by Martha D. Freeman, Jerry Henderson, and Helen Simons]

Section III: Guidelines for the Distribution of Cultural Resource Reports; [prepared by Helen Simons]

Section IV: Suggestions for Cost Control of Published Reports; [prepared by Helen Simons]

Prior to the 1982 Spring meeting, a new draft of the Curation Guidelines and line-by-line amendments of Performance and Reports Section I guidelines were published as Draft 3 in Vol. 6(1) of the newsletter. Reports Sections II through IV were recommended for separate handbooks. The Public Awareness Committee (formerly Political Action and Public Affairs) sought cooperation with the Texas Archeological Society's Public Awareness Committee, noting that CTA members had participated in formulating the TAS draft statement. The Education Committee (formerly Professional Archeological Careers and Careers in Texas Archeology) suggested that CTA print pamphlets to distribute to undergraduates and other interested students. The Avocational Involvement Committee (previously Avocational Archeologists and Avocational Archeology) had no formal statement printed in this issue.

Vol. 6(1) also announced plans for discussing the contents of the Reports, Curation, and Performance documents as minimal standards at the 1982 Spring meeting. The CTA membership was asked to consider whether they should be expected to follow the standards, obligated to comply with the standards, or required to adhere to the standards set forth in these Guidelines. A provisional two-year trial/review period was suggested, with an interim discussion session to be held at the 1983 Spring meeting, and a vote on final acceptance of these three documents to be taken at the 1984 Spring meeting.

During the 1982 Spring meeting a decision was made to institute a $7.50 charge for copies of the Guidelines in order to recover reproduction and postage expenses. The membership determined that the guidelines voted upon and adopted by CTA would become draft professional guidelines which CTA members would agree to follow as closely as possible. The Performance, Curation, and Reports guidelines were accepted as amended at the meeting, beginning the two-year trial period as set forth in Vol. 6(1) of the newsletter. Committee members responsible for this provisional draft were:

Performance (Susan L. Andrews, Coordinator)

Reports (Jerry Henderson, Coordinator; James E. Bruseth and J. Peter Thurmond, Content Preparators)

Curation (Barbara J. Baskin and Carolyn Spock, Coordinators)

Coordinator of Committees, Kay Killen

At this time the Performance and Curation committees were dissolved and the Reports Committee released from further work on the Guidelines part of its documents (Section I). Reports Sections II through IV (Distribution and Cost Control had not been discussed in the 1982 Spring meeting), Avocational Involvement, and Career Information (Education Committee) materials remained in the hands of their respective committees, who were to reorganize and finalize the wording of their sections so that appropriate portions could be prepared for distribution as pamphlets or handouts. Concerns of the Public Awareness Committee were taken over by CTA's standing committee on Governmental Affairs or the Texas Archeological Society's Public Awareness Committee.

An Editing and Review Committee was established to reword certain ambiguous guideline sections, respond to comments from the membership on guideline content/ problems, write a preface, and generally edit the material into a single uniform format. This committee, as originally established, consisted of:

Editing and Review (Frederick L. Briuer, Chair)

Having accepted the Guidelines on a provisional basis, the Council asked the Texas Antiquities Committee (TAC) and the Texas Historical Commission (THC)--as official reviewers of archeological work in Texas--to use the draft Guidelines as minimal standards and to provide an evaluation of them at the 1983 Spring meeting. Members were encouraged to transmit comments and amendments to the Editing and Review Committee.

The 1982 Fall meeting produced no additional material from the Reports, Avocational, and Careers committees. Fred Briuer provided the membership with a questionnaire regarding areas of the Guidelines which the Editing and Review Committee considered problematical; the results were published in the Vol. 7(2) issue of the newsletter. Membership on this committee remained essentially the same, though Bob Alexander was dropped and Carolyn Spock was added as an ex officio member in charge of preparing and distributing the Guidelines.

Draft 4 of the Guidelines was released at the 1983 Spring meeting after reworking by the Editing and Review Committee. The Council was informed that the State Historic Preservation Officer's staff at the Texas Historical Commission had been using the Report Guidelines as informal minimal standards in their project reviews since the Spring of 1982; by the Fall 1983 meeting, the SHPO's office had formally adopted the CTA Report Guidelines and were considering adopting the entire set of documents. Individuals interested in serving on the Curation Implementation Committee were solicited from the membership at the 1983 Spring meeting and were later officially appointed by the President:

Curation Implementation (Eileen Johnson, Chair)

In February of 1984 the Texas Antiquities Committee, also considering adopting the CTA Guidelines as standards, sponsored a workshop session which included several concerns covered by the Guidelines: the participation and involvement of Principal Investigators on projects, adherence to and applications of proposals and research designs, and the quality of reports, particularly those documenting small projects. Other workshop sessions were planned; any determination about official adoption of the Guidelines by the TAC was perforce deferred.

The CTA Guidelines for Performance, Curation, and Reports were presented to the membership as scheduled at the 1984 Spring meeting; the set of documents was formally voted on and accepted by the Council as an official code of self-regulation. Performance and Curation sections were discussed as planned at the meeting; while some editorial alterations were suggested in the Curation wording, no substantive amendments were proposed. The possibility of CTA members working with the Texas Historical Commission to establish regional research topics which would coexist with or be appended to the Guidelines was also discussed.

Following this Spring 1984 meeting, the THC and TAC continued to review and/or use the Guidelines as the membership had requested. The Resource Conservation section of the THC (Federal Review and Compliance) officially adopted the entire set of CTA Guidelines in December 1984 after its publication in the Texas Register. The Guidelines are used by this office to administer and comply with pertinent Federal regulations (36 CFR 60,61,63,66,800...) and are adopted by reference where not in conflict with these Federal regulations.

In conjunction with the Spring 1985 meeting (at which the first set of Guidelines amendments were adopted), the TAC held a second workshop considering mutual CTA/TAC standards. Discussion at this meeting centered on curation-related issues: (1) sampling of certain classes of material collections and (2) differential housing for low priority material collections. Of major interest was Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's request to curate archeological collections which would be sealed in plastic containers and buried underground. Again, the TAC deferred a decision on these curatorial matters until additional information could be gathered for consideration by the entire Committee as well as the Council.

It was quite apparent, even at the time of adoption, that the issues addressed in or pertinent to the Guidelines had not been fully resolved or exhausted; it remains to be seen if the Amendment Procedure makes the set of documents as flexible as its authors and the Council intend.

[This update has been compiled from articles and the minutes of CTA meetings published in issues of the CTA Newsletter. The wording in some instances remains substantially as it appeared in its original format. Volume, issue, month, and year of citation in newsletter are normally used in brackets if not part of text. The authors and Secretary-Treasurers are to be commended for their attention to detail—errors in interpretation are most likely those of this compiler. C. Spock, February 1992]

By the CTA Fall 1985 meeting, copies of the Guidelines were available at a cost of $7.50 for reproduction and postage/handling. CTA members, agency reviewers, and companies needing archeological consulting were encouraged to become familiar with the Guidelines.

Before elaborating on Guidelines activities from late 1985 through 1991, it should be helpful to review an issue which had at this time become a major concern of the Council: the display/reburial of human remains. To retrace its development within CTA, a special committee on aboriginal reburial was formed by President Elton R. Prewitt prior to the Fall 1983 meeting. The committee was to develop a professional position for CTA discussion and adoption at the Spring 1984 meeting; it was to ameliorate or avoid potential conflicts between rights of Native Americans and the rights of archeologists engaged in legitimate research. This special committee became the Curation Guidelines for Human Biological Materials (Remains) Committee (HBMC) in Spring 1984:

Curation Guidelines for Human Biological Materials (P. Lynn Denton, Chair)

By 1984, the Texas Historical Commission had also established a group focusing on human remains issues, the Committee for the Protection of Human Remains and Sacred Objects (CPHRSO). The members of CPHRSO represented several scientific disciplines, American Indian organizations, the state network of museums, and various state and federal regulatory agencies.

This brings us to the Fall of 1985, when members of CPHRSO presented a special session prior to the CTA Fall business meeting. A suggestion made at that time to abolish the CTA human remains committee and in its place put representatives on the above broad-based committee was turned down at the business meeting [10(1), 2/86]. In hindsight, this was fortunate, for it was reported to the CTA membership at the Spring 1986 meeting that progress within the CPHRSO had reached a stalemate, as some Native American members refused to consider anything short of the reburial of all human remains held in museums and institutions. The discussion following this revelation was quite spirited; from it came a request that HBMC prepare a packet on the scientific utility of burial data to be distributed to the Texas Legislature when needed. In an action more directly related to these Guidelines, the Curation Implementation Committee (CIC) was also to incorporate the topic of human remains into the CTA Curation Guidelines [10(2), 7/86].

The HBMC's policy proposal on the treatment of human remains was presented in CTA Newsletter 10(3), October 1986, as was the CIC's Curatorial Policy for Human Skeletal Remains and the Curatorial Guidelines for Human Remains. A reprinting of the Society for American Archaeology's policy statement on human remains was also included in this newsletter.

In CTA Newsletter 10(4), December 1986, the HBMC offered a draft version of an informational pamphlet on the archeological and scientific perspective of the value of maintaining human skeletal remains. At the Spring 1987 meeting, the above committee noted that the duties with which it had been charged had now been met. At the same meeting, the two proposals from the CIC were approved for inclusion in the Guidelines as Curation Appendix A.

Interest in Native American protective legislation continued to accelerate as several State and Federal bills regarding human remains and Native American materials were presented in the Texas and U. S. legislatures between 1986 and 1990. During these years, the CPHRSO evolved into the Texas Historical Commission's Human Remains Advisory Committee as pan-Indian dissidents dropped out and the Committee's focus was redirected toward legislation. And, though CTA members were much concerned about various aspects of proposed protective legislation, no CTA Guidelines amendments were offered regarding these matters during this period.

The next guidelines-directed activity following the Spring 1987 meeting occurred in Fall 1989, when the CIC, having been relatively static since 1986, was again charged with the responsibility of producing a guidelines document after it was reported that the Texas Antiquities Committee (TAC) had made little progress in formulating its own curation guidelines. To the suggestion that CTA's proposals might be too stringent to be incorporated by the TAC, an accreditation by levels, with possible CTA assistance grants for repository upgrading, was discussed. At the same business meeting, a proposal to reinstate the CTA Human Remains Committee (HBMC) was made and approved [14(1), 3/90].

It was further related that the Corps of Engineers (COE) had been preparing a report on curation standards at repositories holding its materials, with the Department of the Interior feeling that the upgrading of COE collections should be the responsibility of each individual repository. It was suggested that enforcing CTA guidelines on Federally-assisted projects would be facilitated by placing the guidelines in each Memorandum of Agreement's (MOA) compliance requirements. The difficulty of repositories meeting minimal Federal standards was noted; it was mentioned that the National Park Service (NPS) was spending $25 million on curation, and that $100,000 of that was in a contract with the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory to upgrade its curation of NPS Amistad collections.

In a somewhat different vein, a Performance Guidelines amendment incorporating excavation safety was proposed [14(2), 10/90] at the Spring 1990 meeting. Proposed at the same meeting was a change of the Curation Guidelines to require the use of archivally stable materials for field and laboratory records. Both proposals were approved at the Fall 1990 meeting. Please note that the current Curation Guidelines section 3.2.1 contains a sentence from the original section that was inadvertently left out in the amendment's official newsletter printings [14(1) and 14(2)]: "Consideration should be given to the longevity and improved reproducibility of the original, as well as adequate accessibility for future researchers."

Also in CTA Newsletter 14(2), the CIC first presented a set of Curation Guidelines and CTA Bylaws amendments to the membership as part of its directive to implement the Curation Guidelines. In addition, the CIC proposed a Repository Accreditation Policy which outlined the scope of accreditation, the authority of the Accreditation and Review Council, application procedures, and the initial, field, and final reviews of the applicant repository, as well as appeal and reaccreditation policies.

At the Fall 1990 CTA meeting, the implications of recently passed Federal laws regarding inventorying, identifying cultural affiliation and repatriation of items (and how these matters would concern repositories) were discussed. It was noted that determination of ownership (Federal vs. State) would become a major issue in deciding which entity holds regulatory authority [15(2), 3/91].

Also at this meeting, a lively debate of the CIC proposals to amend the CTA Bylaws and Curation Guidelines and to adopt a Repository Accreditation Policy followed the passage of the proposed amendments on subsurface excavation and the use of archivally stable records materials. Though the former proposals were temporarily tabled, they were approved after minor editorial changes during the Spring 1991 meeting [15(3), 9/91].

Changes in committee membership occurred after the CIC was established in 1983. By 1985, members were:

Curation Implementation Committee (Eileen Johnson, Chair)

In 1986, Carolyn Spock replaced Baskin; in 1989, Jeanine (Seay) McDonald and Laura Hillier Nightengale were added. In 1991, McDonald resigned the CIC, as the committee itself began the process of dissolution prior to reforming as the Accreditation and Review Council (ARC) outlined in the revised CTA Bylaws. The CTA membership did instruct the CIC/ARC to produce a policy statement with definitions to be discussed and approved in Spring 1992.

New amendments in all sections of the Guidelines and a recapping of ongoing work by the ARC will be published in future Updates to the Development of the Guidelines as reprintings occur.