Archaeology and experience...

Hello. I received a B.A. in Anthropology in 1978 from Stony Brook University after transferring there from SUNY Buffalo, NY with 60 credits. I then attended Graduate School in Anthropology/Archaeology until 1982. I had a field school in "Long Island Prehistory" in 1977 with R. M. Gramly, (B.S. in Geology from R.P.I., an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University) on the "Pipe Stave Hollow Site" in Mt. Sinai Harbor, published in the "Massachusetts Bulletin of Archaeology". Many of the artifacts found there have an affinity with those found on Martha's Vineyard, MA where the former New York State Archaeologist William Ritchie, excavated sites and who published an archaeology of it in the 1960s. Gramly had, as a student, assisted William Ritchie on the West Athens Hill site, which, until recently, was the oldest known site in New York State, near Catskill, NY which we visited along with the now National Register site, Mt. Jasper, in northern New Hampshire, an early rhyolite adit, and tools of which were found, near the Androscoggin River which empties into the Atlantic Ocean in Maine.

I started working in "contract" archaeology in New York City for various companies that came to NYC. One experience I had in NYC was when I accompanied an archaeologist to one of the then World Trade Center sites being built on the word of another that ship remains had been found in the excavation and we were denied access. Since then, more mandated oversight has developed. Not much later, in 1983, I actually found a buried ship in the landfill of the "175 Water Street Site" in the last of our three "deep tests" permitted using a small backhoe. The original site was first under the direction of an historical archaeologist, then the ship excavation by underwater archaeologists. I worked once in the Columbia University lab space of the archaeologist Ralph Solecki, Ph.D., who found Neanderthal burials in Shanidar Cave, Iraq, arguably the earliest evidence of primate mortuary practices. Besides that, before moving to Texas, he was also a "local" archaeologist, and known for protecting sites on Long Island as a friend of Carlyle S. Smith, who wrote "The Archaeology of Coastal New York" in 1950. Smith was a friend of the Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl.

I grew up in Centereach, Long Island, New York, in the Middle Country school district, as it's centrally located.