Abstract

Archaeologists are increasingly involved in environmental planning studies required as a precondition of development. A major component of these studies is the identification of prehistoric archaeological site locations that may be affected by the proposed undertakings. The challenge to archaeologists is to identify, with limited field reconnaissance, location(s) that are most likely to have significant material remains. The method developed and described is intentionally generic, and may be applied in any regional study, although the specific data used would vary. A contextuel approach incorporating both ecological and cultural data is advocated for assessing archaeological potentiel. Relevant ecological and cultural features of the environment are mapped and overlaid to assess potential. The opportunities and limitations posed by the scales of ecological data are illustrated, and examples of the databases available for such studies in Ontario are described. The importance of specific cultural adaptation and land use hypotheses in relation to the ecological context is emphasized. Cultural data (ethnographic and archaeological) relating to patterns of land use and resource exploitation are incorporated. Using examples from studies undertaken in Ontario, an approach to classifying high potential areas in a regional context is presented.