Through a cooperative agreement with the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), a division of the National Park Service, MTU industrial archaeology student Gianfranco Archimede spent the summer of 2000 documenting historic gold mining sites in Death Valley National Park. HAER documentation projects consist of three components: development of site and contextual history, architectural measured drawings, and large format photography. A team of students and experts is assembled to carry out these tasks, working together for twelve weeks during the summer. This summer's Death Valley recording project was the beginning of a three year process for HAER, and required preliminary site surveys, artifact assessment, an explanation of technological processes at the sites, locating documentary resources necessary to pull site histories together, and large format photographic documentation. As a professional large format photographer, Gianfranco was well suited for the task of photographing for HAER. He also focused on one of the three documented sites in interest of expanding his thesis research on mining landscapes. The other team member was industrial archaeologist Paul White, a graduate of the MTU/ IA program. Paul was responsible for the historic and survey portion of the project.

For more information, use the links below to arrive at your area of interest

DEVA PROJECT & HISTORIC OVERVIEW | HAER SITE SURVEY & RESEARCH

PURPOSE & PROCESS OF DOCUMENTATION | PRODUCTS OF HAER PROJECTS

DEATH VALLEY HAER PHOTOGRAPHY

FURTHER MTU - IA RESEARCH: INTERPRETING THE HISTORIC MINING LANDSCAPE

MTU IA Home Page: http://www.industrialarchaeology.net


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