Myers My Interests

I am interested in employment in archaeology. I am a graduate of Stony Brook University, near where I grew up, Centereach, NY. I attended Buffalo University from 1973-1975 and Stony Brook University from 1976-1978 and graduated with a BA in Anthropology. Accepted into a PhD program in the Dept. of Anthropology in 1978 and employed in work-study since 1976, I attended full-time until 1981, and accumulated 51 graduate credits. I also passed the comprehensive written exam and selected a committee (Elizabeth Stone, PhD, Pedro Carrasco, PhD, then Chairman of the Department, and Philip Weigand, PhD) was given three essays to write, if completed, would have lead to an MA in Anthropology on the way to a PhD. I would have to start all over I was told. I attended field-school in "Long Island Archaeology" (the Pipe Stave Hollow Site Mt. Sinai, NY, in 1977). I volunteered at the Suffolk County Archaeology Association on some of the sites investigated by Johanneman and Schroeder, whose lab space in Graduate Chemistry was next to the Anthropology Dept. In summers I've also worked for archaeologists in the National Parks Service at Fort McHenry, MD, Hopewell Foundry and Allegheny Portage Railroad in PA, the Klondike Historical Park in Skagway, Alaska and the William Floyd Manor on Long Island, for the Denver Service Center. With another recent BA Anthropology grad, Mary FitzHerbert, I traveled to work on the Tenn-Tombigbee Barge Canal impacts in Mississippi, specifically at the Waverly Plantation Ferry Access, nearby Columbus, MS and Bay Springs, MS under the direction of William H. Adams, PhD, a well known historical archaeologist. She was on student visa, from Uruguay, and returned to Hillside Farm, Birches Road, Penallt, Wales (near Monmouth). We met an American Antiquity writer, who had a Fulbright fellowship and had worked with her Uruguayan archaeology friends on the proposed hydroelectric dam now spanning the river between Uruguay and Brazil. It was also excavated by the Museum of Man of Paris, France as we were shown in slides from there while in Mississippi, the wettest year on record. Once moved to the new Social and Behavioral Sciences building, the Long Island Archaeology Project lab moved to the Boat House at Suffolk County's Blydenburgh Park in Smithtown, NY, the former Weld Estate and a former water-powered light manufacturing site. Mr. Johanneman became ill some time after and the Boat House closed. I had then officially left on a "one year leave of absence" when more practical experience in the field presented itself in New York City, commuting from Ronkonkoma. Since then I have been employed in "Public Archaeology" (an actual MS degree once offered at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, for a short time, taught in part, by staff of New York State's Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and Sherene Baugher, PhD. a Stony Brook Anthropology recent grad who went on to be hired as the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission's first archaeologist for consultation and review of other archaeology work submitted to the Commission. The LPC, charter-empowered by the Planning Commission issues a certificate of occupancy for those approved. Some of the professors in archaeology, while pursuing the Anthropology degrees, important, R. M. Gramly, PhD, Edward Lanning, PhD, archaeologist of Peru (author of "Peru Before the Incas" who introduced "El Nino") and Philip Weigand, PhD, (P.I. on many of Johanneman and Schroeder, et al, reports, once to testify on a property in Southampton. He also authored Mexico's "Prehistory of Zacatecas" published in Stony Brook's Anthropology journal. He had an NSF grant for neutron activation trace element analysis of samples from prehistoric turquoise mines collected for a number of years in the American Southwest and oversaw the "La Quemada" ceramic collection excavated in the early 1960s. The research was conducted at Brookhaven Lab's archaeological chemistry lab, with Garman Harbottle. A statistical analysis was done then in "hyperspace" and recently, the method was refined for a world-wide database of mineral-based antiquities. I have worked on a total station transit and computer (Lietz tachymeter and Sokkisha, now Sokkia) on archaeology sites for a number of years beginning in 1984 through 1994 and worked with AutoCAD to document sites. I first used AutoCAD software (personal copy) in the "tree survey" of Wave Hill in the Bronx, NY for the botanist, a horticultural center, providing a 50 year update and larger area map of the trees on the now joined two former estates. One resident was Samuel Clemens, (who had a tree-house for interviews), the famous conductor Arturo Toscanini, and others, the once British Embassy compound, over-looks the Hudson River and the New Jersey Palisades. It's owner was once instrumental in stopping the mining of the basalt palisades on the NJ shore preserved today. I also worked recording the archaeology in the adjoining NYCs Riverdale Park with a total station when a plan for removal of invading foreign plant species triggered the work. When I worked for five years with Grossman & Associates, Inc. (1989-1994) in mostly EPA, HAZMAT (certified training and yearly renewed certification), National Priority Superfund projects in New York and New Jersey, reviewed by archaeologist John Vetter, PhD, of Adelphi U. and the EPA's Region 2 reviewer (NY/NJ/CT, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands) and other inter-agency reviewers, in the Federal review process, (the Kansas City Army Corps of Engineers office, NOAA, etc.) I was listed as cartographer and computer graphics producer in the reports. Other software and hardware use required at Grossman & Associates for archaeological analysis, was learning the then named MR2 Rolleimetric close-range photogrammetry system, a large digitizing tablet; an EM38 Ground Conductivity Meter, without recorder; a soil resistivity meter, no recorder; two proton magnetometers, we connected to Psion hand-held computers as recorders at Foundry Cove, and a hand-held cesium proton magnetometer worn with battery-harness and a palm-top computer, used with a hand-held switch at Saratoga Springs historic "city gas" plant; and sometimes reprocessing others' remote-sensed data; and compiling historic maps overlays for large size plotter output using various graphics software. The equipment used for US EPA National Priority Superfund investigations sometimes conducted in winter under greenhouses, in a way were evaluated under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. I also compiled overlays of historic and modern maps for investigations, interim and final archaeology reports, included in the proposed remediation. In my opinion, as a Federal system, it arrived at an impasse in 1994, and NY State Superfund monies also ran out subsequently. Federal funds are provided in part by the chemical industry's insurance and in part by a "double cost" penalty from the result of a successful Federal prosecution and resulting EPA approved and reviewed cleanup. Also Federal standards can differ from the acceptable levels of cleanup set by States.