Archaeology and technology

I've worked in contract archaeology for a number of years, incorporating new technology in beta and development as work progressed in the compliance of business to local state and federal laws in the United States. My experience has been in archaeology for almost 30 years. I worked for Envirosphere, a division of Ebasco, then in the World Trade Center, in NYC, 22 years ago on the archaeological clearance of Fort Drum, NY prior to the relocation of the US Army 10th Mountain Division from Camp Hale, Colorado. The former seasonal Army facility, outside Watertown, New York, has since became a year-round military base. I've worked with Zeiss-Leitz infrared transit attached to the world's first "laptop" computer (Epson HX-20 though the photo exhibit is missing the microcassete storage device that would replace the plastic panel on the right side of the screen, for storing BASIC programs, the paper "register" tape was the "permanent" record) which became ubiquitous in many companies new survey instruments using infrared transits now applied to traditional optical surveying (bought by Sokkia in 1978 formally un-PC "Sokkisha"). I've also worked with the data recording of remote sensing, i.e., magnetometer survey in the historic West Point Foundry Cove for EPA Superfund cleanup, as another example. I worked on NY/NJ EPA National Priority Superfund cleanup sites over ten years ago, as a cartographer, in part with the Rollei metric close-range photogrammetry system in development (tablet register a collection of documented photos of a place or object, software analyzes them for similarities, and allows measurement in 3-D on them, reconstructing a measurable, accurate, 3-Dimensional virtual reality) the field transit surveyor and computer-graphics report preparer for Joel W. Grossman, Ph.D., (Grossman and Associates). The work during 1989-1994 required HAZMAT certification and yearly refresher courses, taken at the Westchester County Fire Training Center, Dana Road, Valhalla, NY after certification at CUNY and a client's offices in NJ. I once held a supervisor's "Health and Safety" certificate. I worked with underwater archaeologists, remote sensing, and map compilations for the use of agencies at the Federal level for compliance then. The EPA has became very political and determined by "loopholes" (i.e., mortgage grantors were about to be held legally responsible for cleanups) rather than enforcement. More recently I have worked in fieldwork mostly, in southeastern Orange County, NY last year, on two large, 500 + acre, projects one near Harriman and Kiryas Joel, NY and the other, across the road from the west perimeter of West Point Military Academy, near Mineral Springs Road in Woodbury, NY. Ironically I could see Bull Hill the Harriman one where I had worked with Panamerican, testing after the tree upheaval after Hurricane Floyd on the US Military Academy property in 2001, also still apparent in the Woodbury survey, (treetops torn off in Harriman) though not as drastic. I also worked across the Hudson River in Putnam County in Cold Spring, NY for an EPA remediation evaluation in the border of the West Point Foundry National Register District. I've also helped document two Hudson River centerboard sloop wrecks at the shoreline of the Bear Mountain State Park, in Popolopen Creek, for the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. An article from the research, published by one of their employees, appeared in "Sea History: the Art, Literature, Adventure, Lore & Learning of the Sea" the quarterly magazine of the National Maritime Historical Society, based in Peekskill, NY which I have been a member of. I started using computers in archaeology with the IBM-XT 8088 desktop, and Compaq portable with stand alone Tallgrass hard drive and tape backup. Initial uses of computers also created a hobby for me having a souped up IBM PCjr and currently a VIA Nehemiah cpu (1 Ghz) in a "Pentium III" for internet use and a 19" Hanns-G LCD so I could also do some limited CAD work, having experience in AutoCad since it started, used in a tree survey for the botanist of Wave Hill, in the Bronx, NY way back in desktop computer history in 1984 or so.