SECTION 26.3. Definitions

The following words and terms, when used in this chapter, shall have the following meanings unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. These definitions also clarify the interpretation of terms and phrases used in the Antiquities Code of Texas but not defined therein

(1) Accession--The formal acceptance of a collection and its recording into the holdings of a curatorial facility and generally includes a transfer of title. For held-in-trust collections, stewardship but not title is transferred to the curatorial facility.

(2) Antiquities Advisory Board--A ten-member board that advises the commission in reviewing matters related to the Antiquities Code of Texas.

(3) Antiquities Permit or Permit--Authorization for work on a designated or potential State Antiquities Landmark, or survey investigations to determine if cultural resources are present. Permit types include Archeological Permits (§26.15 of this title) and Historic Buildings and Structures Permits (§26.22 of this title).

(4) Applicant--Relative to an Antiquities Permit, an applicant is the controlling agency, organization, or political subdivision having administrative control over a publicly owned landmark or the owner of a privately owned landmark. Applicant may also refer to an individual or private group that desires to nominate a building or site for landmark designation.

(5) Archeological site--Any land or marine-based place containing evidence of prehistoric or historic human activity, including but not limited to the following:

(A) Habitation sites. Habitation sites are areas or structures where people live or have lived on a permanent or temporary basis.

(B) Native American open campsites which were occupied on a temporary, seasonal, or intermittent basis.

(C) Rock shelters, in general, are a special kind of campsite. These sites are located in caves or under rock overhangs and have been occupied either: temporarily, seasonally, or intermittently.

(D) Non-Native American campsites are the cultural remains of activities by people who are not Native American.

(E) Residence sites are those where routine daily activities were carried out and which were intended for year-round use.

(F) Non-Native American sites may include, in addition to the main structure, outbuildings, water systems, trash dumps, garden areas, driveways, and other remains that were an integral part of the site when it was inhabited.

(G) Non-habitation sites. Non-habitation sites result from use during specialized activities and may include standing structures.

(i) Rock art and graffiti sites consist of symbols or representations that have been painted, ground, carved, sculpted, scratched, or pecked on or into the surface of rocks, wood, or metal, including but not limited to Native American pictographs and petroglyphs, historical graffiti and inscriptions.

(ii) Mines, quarry areas, and lithic procurement sites are those from which raw materials such as flint, clay, coal, minerals, or other materials were collected or mined for future use.

(iii) Game procurement and processing sites are areas where game was killed or butchered for food or hides.

(iv) Fortifications, battlefields, training grounds and skirmish sites including fortifications of the historic period and the central areas of encounters between opposing forces, whether a major battleground or areas of small skirmishes.

(v) Cache--A collection of artifacts that are deliberately hidden for future use. Caches are often discovered in burials or in caves and usually consist of ceremonial and ritual objects, functional objects or emergency food supplies.

(6) Archeological Survey Standards for Texas--Minimum survey standards developed by the commission in consultation with the Council of Texas Archeologists.

(7) Artifacts--The tangible objects of the past that relate to human life and culture. Examples include, but are not limited to projectile points, tools, documents, art forms, and technologies.

(8) Board--The Antiquities Advisory Board.

(9) Building--A structure created to shelter any form of human activity, such as a courthouse, city hall, church, hotel, house, barn, or similar structure. Building may refer to a historically related complex such as a courthouse and jail or a house and barn.

(10) Burials and burial pits--Marked and unmarked locales of a human burial or burials. Burials and burial pits may contain the remains of one or more individuals located in a common grave in a locale. The site area may contain gravestones, markers, containers, coverings, garments, vessels, tools, and other grave objects or could be evidenced by the presence of depressions, pit feature stains, or other archeological evidence.

(11) Cemetery--A place that is used or intended to be used for interment, and includes a graveyard, burial park, unknown cemetery, abandoned cemetery, mausoleum, or any other area containing one or more graves or unidentified graves.

(A) Abandoned cemetery--A non-perpetual care cemetery containing one or more graves and possessing cemetery elements for which no cemetery organization exists and which is not otherwise maintained by any caretakers. It may or may not be recorded in the deed records of the county in which it lies.

(B) Unidentified grave--A grave that is not marked in a manner that provides the identity of the interment.

(C) Unknown cemetery--An abandoned cemetery evidenced by the presence of marked or unmarked graves that does not appear on a map or in deed records.

(12) Commission--The Texas Historical Commission and its staff.

(13) Committee, or Antiquities Committee, or Texas Antiquities Committee--As redefined by the 74th Texas Legislature within §191.003 of the Texas Natural Resources Code, committee means the commission and/or staff members of the commission.

(14) Conservation--Scientific laboratory processes for cleaning, stabilizing, restoring, preserving artifacts, and the preservation of buildings, sites, structures and objects.

(15) Council of Texas Archeologists--A non-profit voluntary organization that promotes the goals of professional archeology in the State of Texas.

(16) Council of Texas Archeologists Guidelines--Professional and ethical standards which provide a code of self-regulation for archeological professionals in Texas with regard to field methods, reporting, and curation.

(17) Cultural landscape--A geographic area, associated with a historic event, activity, or person or exhibiting other cultural or aesthetic values. Cultural landscapes include historic sites, historic designed landscapes, and historic vernacular landscapes, as further described in the National Park Service's Preservation Brief 36: Protecting Cultural Landscapes.

(18) Cultural resource--Any building, site, structure, object, artifact, historic shipwreck, landscape, location of historical, archeological, educational, or scientific interest, including, but not limited to, prehistoric and historic Native American or aboriginal campsites, dwellings, and habitation sites, archeological sites of every character, treasure embedded in the earth, sunken or abandoned ships and wrecks of the sea or any part of the contents thereof, maps, records, documents, books, artifacts, and implements of culture in any way related to the inhabitants' prehistory, history, government, or culture. Examples of cultural resources include Native American mounds and campgrounds, aboriginal lithic resource areas, early industrial and engineering sites, rock art, early cottage and craft industry sites, bison kill sites, cemeteries, battlegrounds, all manner of historic buildings and structures, local historical records, cultural landscapes, etc.

(19) Curatorial facility--A museum or repository.

(20) Default--Failure to fulfill all conditions of a permit or contract, issued or granted to permittee(s), sponsors, and principal investigator or investigative firm, before the permit has expired.

(21) Defaulted permit--A permit that has expired without all permit terms and conditions having been met before the permit expiration date.

(22) Designated historic district--An area of archeological, architectural, or historical significance that is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, either individually or as a historic district; designated as a landmark, or nominated for designation as a landmark; or identified by State agencies or political subdivisions of the State as a historically sensitive site, district, or area. This includes historical designation by local landmark commissions, boards, or other public authorities, or through local preservation ordinances.

(23) Destructive analysis--Destroying all or a portion of an object or sample to gain specialized information. For purposes of this chapter, it does not include analysis of objects or samples prior to their being accessioned by a curatorial facility.

(24) Discovery--The act of locating, recording, and reporting a cultural resource.

(25) Disposal--The discard of an object or sample after being recovered and prior to accession, or after deaccession.

(26) District--A significant concentration, linkage, or continuity of sites, buildings, structures, or objects unified historically or aesthetically by plan or physical development. See also "designated historic district."

(27) Eligible--Archeological sites or other historic properties that meet the criteria set forth in §§26.10 - 26.12 and §26.19 of these titles (relating to Criteria for Evaluating Archeological Sites and Verifying Cemeteries, Criteria for Shipwrecks, Criteria for Evaluating Caches and Collections, and Criteria for Evaluating Historical Buildings and Structures, respectively) are eligible for official landmark designation.

(28) Exhumation--The excavation of human burials or cemeteries and its associated funerary objects by a professional archeologist, or principal investigator.

(29) Groundbreaking--Construction or earth moving activities that disturb lands owned or controlled by state agencies or political subdivisions of the state.

(30) Held-in-trust collection--Those state-associated collections under the authority of the commission that are placed in a curatorial facility for care and management; stewardship is transferred to that curatorial facility but not ownership.

(31) Historic buildings and structures permit--Historic buildings and structures permits are those issued for work to buildings, structures, cultural landscapes, and non-archeological sites, objects, and districts designated or nominated for designation as landmarks.

(32) Historic property--A district, site, building, structure or object significant in American history, architecture, engineering, archeology or culture.

(33) Historic time period--For the purposes of landmark designation, this time period is defined as extending from A.D. 1500 to 50 years before the present.

(34) Human remains--The body of a decedent.

(35) Integrity--The authenticity of a property's historic identity, evidenced by the survival of physical characteristics that existed during the property's historic or prehistoric period, including the property's location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association.

(36) Interment--The intended permanent disposition of human remains by entombment, burial, or placement in a niche.

(37) Investigation--Archeological or architectural activity including, but not limited to: reconnaissance or intensive survey, testing, exhumation, or data recovery; underwater archeological survey, test excavation, or data recovery excavations; monitoring; measured drawings; or photographic documentation.

(38) Investigative firm--A company or scientific institution that has full-time experienced research personnel capable of handling investigations and employs a principal investigator, and/or project architect, or other project professional as applicable under "professional personnel" in paragraph (52) of this section. The company or institution holds equal responsibilities with the professional personnel to complete requirements under an Antiquities Permit.

(39) Land-owning or controlling agency--Any state agency or political subdivision of the state that owns or controls the land(s) in question.

(40) Landmark--A State Antiquities Landmark.

(41) Marker--An informational aluminum sign erected by or with the permission of the Texas Historical Commission.

(42) Mitigation--The amelioration of the potential total or partial loss of significant cultural resources. For example, mitigation for removal of a deteriorated historic building feature might include photographs and drawings of the feature, and installing a replacement that matches the original in form, material, color, etc. Mitigation for the loss of an archeological site might be accomplished through data recovery actions, to preserve or recover an appropriate amount of data by application of current professional techniques and procedures, as defined in the permit's scope of work.

(43) Monument--Includes features planted, built, or installed that commemorate or designate the importance of an event, person, or place, which may or may not be located at the site(s) they commemorate, such as stone or metal monuments and statuary as well as trees, shrubs, designed landscapes, and other plantings located on public grounds such as courthouse squares and parks. Aluminum markers erected by or with the permission of the commission are not included in this definition

(44) National Register of Historic Places--A register of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects significant in American history, architecture, archeology, and culture maintained by the United States Secretary of the Interior. Information concerning the National Register of Historic Places is available through the commission or from the National Park Service at www.nps.gov/nr.

(45) Object--The term "object" can refer to artifacts or is a type of structure that is primarily artistic in nature or are relatively small in scale and simply constructed. Although it may be, by nature or design, movable, an object is associated with a specific setting or environment. Examples of objects include artifacts, monuments, markers, and sculpture.

(46) Permit application offense--Failure to properly apply for a permit and/or receive authorization for an emergency permit by the commission, prior to the actual performance of an archeological investigation or other project work.

(47) Permit censuring--A restriction in the ability of a principal investigator or other professional personnel and/or an investigative firm or other professional firm to be issued a permit under the auspices of the Antiquities Code of Texas.

(48) Permittee--The landowning or controlling individual or, public agency and/or a project sponsor that is issued an Antiquities Permit for an archeological investigation or other project work.

(49) Political subdivision--A unit of local government created and operating under the laws of this state, including a city, county, school district, or special district created under the Texas Constitution.

(50) Prehistoric time period--For the purpose of landmark designation, a time period that encompasses a great length of time beginning when humans first entered the New World and ending with the arrival of the Spanish Europeans, which has been approximated for purposes of these guidelines at A.D. 1500.

(51) Professional firm--A company or scientific institution that has professional personnel who meet the required qualifications for specific types of work. The company or institution holds equal responsibilities with the professional personnel to complete requirements under an Antiquities Permit.

(52) Professional personnel--Trained specialists who meet the professional qualifications standards in §26.4 of this title (relating to Professional Qualifications and Requirements) and are required to perform archeological and architectural investigations and project work.

(53) Project--Activity on a cultural resource including, but not limited to: investigation, survey, testing, excavation, restoration, demolition, scientific or educational study.

(54) Project sponsor--A public agency, individual, institution, investigative firm or other professional firm, organization, corporation, contractor, and/or company paying costs of archeological investigation or other project work, or that sponsors, funds, or otherwise functions as a party under a permit.

(55) Public agency--Any state agency or political subdivision of the state.

(56) Public lands--Non-federal, public lands that are owned or controlled by the State of Texas or any of its political subdivisions, including the tidelands, submerged land, and the bed of the sea within the jurisdiction of the State of Texas.

(57) Recorded archeological site--Sites that are recorded, listed, or registered with an institution, agency, or university, such as the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory of the University of Texas at Austin.

(58) Register of professional archeologists--A voluntary national professional organization of archeologists which registers qualified archeologists.

(59) Research design--A written theoretical approach and a plan for implementing fieldwork that also explains the goals and methods of the investigation. A research design is developed prior to the implementation of the field study and submitted with a completed Archeological Permit Application.

(60) Ruins--A historic or prehistoric site, composed of both archeological and structural remains, in which the building or structure is in a state of collapse or deterioration to the point that the original roof and/or flooring and/or walls are either missing, partially missing, collapsed, partially collapsed, or seriously damaged through natural forces or structural collapse. Ruins are considered archeological sites, and historic buildings or structures recently damaged or destroyed are not classified as ruins.

(61) Scope of work--A summary of the methodological techniques used to perform the archeological investigation or outline of other project work under permit.

(62) Shipwrecks--The wrecks of naval vessels, Spanish treasure ships, coastal trading schooners, sailing ships, steamships, and river steamships, among other remains of any waterborne craft that sank, ran aground, was beached or docked.

(63) Significance--Importance attributed to sites, buildings, structures and objects of historical, architectural, and archeological value which are landmarks and eligible for official designation and protection under the Antiquities Code of Texas. Historical significance is the importance of a property to the history, architecture, archeology, engineering or culture of a community, state or the nation, and is a trait attributable to properties listed or determined eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places or for state landmark designation.

(64) Site--Any place or location containing physical evidence of human activity. Examples of sites include: the location of prehistoric or historic occupations or activities, a group or district of buildings or structures that share a common historical context or period of significance, and designed cultural landscapes such as parks and gardens.

(65) State agency--A department, commission, board, office, or other agency that is a part of state government and that is created by the constitution or a statute of this state. The term includes an institution of higher education as defined by the Texas Education Code, §61.003.

(66) State Antiquities Landmark--An archeological site, archeological collection, ruin, building, structure, cultural landscape, site, engineering feature, monument or other object, or district that is officially designated as a landmark or treated as a landmark under the interim protection described in §26.8(d) of this title (relating to Designation Procedures for Publicly Owned Landmarks).

(67) State Archeological Landmark--A State Antiquities Landmark.

(68) State associated collections--The collections owned by the State and under the authority of the commission. This includes the following:

(A) Permitted collections--Collections that are the result of work governed by the Antiquities Code of Texas on land or under waters belonging to the State of Texas or any political subdivision of the State requiring the issuance of a permit by the commission.

(B) Non-permitted collections--Collections that are the result of work governed by the Antiquities Code of Texas on land or under waters belonging to the State of Texas or any political subdivision of the State conducted by commission personnel without the issuance of a permit.

(C) Purchased collections--Collections that are the result of the acquisition of significant historical items by the commission through Texas Historical Artifacts Acquisition Program or use of other State funds.

(D) Donated collections--Collections that are the result of a gift, donation, or bequest to the commission.

(E) Court-action collections--Collections that are awarded to the commission by a court through confiscation of illegally-obtained archeological artifacts or any other material that may be awarded to the commission by a court of law.

(F) Legislative action collections--Collections that are transferred to the commission through legislative action.

(69) Structure--A work made up of interdependent and interrelated parts in a definite pattern of organization. The term "structure" is used to distinguish from buildings whose functional constructions were made usually for purposes other than creating human shelter. Constructed by man, it is often an engineering project. Examples of structures include bridges, power plants, water towers, silos, windmills, grain elevators, etc. As used herein, "structure" is also understood to include all non-archeological cultural resources that are not buildings, including cultural landscapes and non-archeological sites, objects, and districts.

(70) Treasures embedded in the earth--In this context, "treasures" refers to artifacts and objects from submerged archeological sites. This can reference artifacts that are either contained within a ship's hull or are isolated yet associated with submerged historic and/or prehistoric archeological sites. The term "treasures" is not meant to imply that objects of monetary value, such as gold and silver, are separately protected under Antiquities Code of Texas. Additionally, "embedded in the earth" refers to artifacts or objects buried or partially covered in underwater sediments.

(71) Unverified cemetery--A location having some evidence of human burial interments, but in which the presence of one or more unmarked graves has not been verified by a person described by §711.0105(a) of the Health and Safety Code of Texas or by the commission.

(72) Verified cemetery--The location of a human burial interment or interments as verified by the commission.

Source Note: The provisions of this §26.3 adopted to be effective May 20, 2013, 38 TexReg 2980; amended to be effective February 29, 2016, 41 TexReg 1440; amended to be effective December 31, 2017, 42 TexReg 7383; amended to be effective May 26, 2021, 46 TexReg 3251