Ed Rutsch in memorabilia (cont'd)

Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 14:02:10 -0700 Reply-To: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY Sender: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY From: George Myers Subject: Re: "Big" Edward Rutsch, archaeologist I remember the first rime I encountered Ed Rutsch back in the 1970's through the lab/office of Edward Johanneman and Laurie Schroeder in the Graduate Chemistry Building at Stony Brook University, where Mr. Johanneman worked for some of the downstate archaeological research of highway projects, through the NYS Education Dept., and Phil Lord. A waste processing plant design I think had encountered a huge shell midden on Fire Island, NY and when I heard about it they were trying different methods of dating it with little success. They had tried a machine that would grab samples through it but that was crushing the stratigraphy and at a fairly shallow level of (rising sea level) it was very wet and the walls of the test probe hole would collapse, and the whole sampling idea, a series of depths removed and examined for artifacts or other data, compared to the levels below and above each, was unworkable. A part time palynologist at Earth and Space Sciences was consulted and a core was taken in the nearby pond or marsh and looking at the chenopodia ("goldenrod") associated with fire and land clearing, two dates were established for the general area, I can't recall them exactly, other than to say they would be about 700 AD and around 1300 AD. Another scientist microtomed hard shell clam and expanding the crossection, one could actually count the tides (2) a day on the shell and see the narrowing of their growth in colder winter weather (sort of like drought's effect on tree ring growth) and establishing a time of year when the shell was harvested. The shell guy also said it could be done for about $25 a shell. I think Ed Rutsch had sub-contracted some of this work to Stony Brook University and that he and Ed Johanneman were friends. I'm not sure where the report was from, I think around Captree on the Great South Bay. The Anthropology Department then moved to the then completed Social Sciences Building, and the lab spaces in Graduate Chemistry were "taken back" by the chemists. His later lecture on the Fort McHenry in Baltimore, MD, which I think his company was awarded a contract to investigate (as was his company for the West Point Foundry, adjacent and in the Cold Spring, NY National Register Historic District, and the Paterson, NJ Historic District, etc.) at the Neighborhood House, part of a tour of the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities holdings and district in Setauket, NY, was extremely helpful when in a series of archaeological investigations by the Dept. of Interior's Denver Service Center, I worked as as an archaeological technician at the Allegheny Portage Railroad Lemon House, the Hopewell Village Foundry Ironmaster's House, and on various features of Fort McHenry investigated in the interest partly of Public Safety. I left that tour which went on to assist the restoration efforts of of the "Summer White House" of President Martin Van Buren, in Old Kinderhook, NY, since returned back from its "white house and Italianate bell tower" to its original coloration, mauve, grey and greens (I think driving by once again to work on a now National Register "city gas" brick gasholder in Saratoga Springs, NY) to return to grad school. His reports to me turned into the "big story" which I ended up in often and a unique experience and opportunity to meet other archaeology types from around the country. George Myers