Re: "Civil War battle sites at risk" claim preservatists
Best Case Scenario given the situation....
What will probably or should happen I would think.....
1) Walmart will have to hire a cultural resource management consultant/firm(Archaeologists) to comply with state and federal historic preservation guidelines
2) the crm firm will do a phase 1 survey to locate site that will be in the area of impact (e.g. the building and parking lot) to locate sites that are potentially eligible for registration on the National Register of Historic Places (a site, depending on state regulations, is two positive shovel test in a row containing more than two artifacts in each. Usually 50 cm wide 80 cm deep 20 meters apart on a grid. Hopefully they will incorporate metal detection in their survey as it is essential for surveying for civil war sites. (They will not only be looking for civil war sites but also other historic and prehistoric cites that may be located in the project area)
3) If potentially eligible sites are found then phase 2 test units will be excavated to determine eligibility of the sites located in phase 1.
4) If there are sites deemed eligible then they will have to mitigate the effects of the project.
Mitigation can either be building around the site (this is usually never the case) or most likely "data recovery" (excavating the cite)
The artifacts recovered will then go to the CRM firm's lab for cataloging and preservation and then most likely sent to where ever the state collections are kept.
Anytime there is Federal or State money/permits involved in large commercial construction projects like a walmart, power plants, etc. companies must adhere to federal guidelines laid out in the National Historic Preservation Act, etc.
If they get a good CRM firm the artifacts will not be hauled out and dumped in a field.
At least this case is highly publicized so they are under a microscope and it will be harder for them to cut corners.
As kool361 noted these new neighborhood developments that have popped on every corner are destroying sites left and right. An excellent example of this is the Georgia port city Sunberry founded in 1758. It dried up in the years following the war of 1812 and eventually abandoned. Today all that remains is a war of 1812 fortification located on a small plot of state land. The entire town was built over by a neighborhood development with no substantial recovery of data or artifacts.