I thought I'd offer some of my experience in this often "perilous pit" topic:
My experience had been to string aluminum frames with string in 10cm
squares and place two of them on the excavated remains and stand on a
ladder and photograph them.That was Bowdoin Park, Dutchess County (how
we Yanks spell it) once J.P. Morgan's summer place on the Hudson
River, across from Marlboro, NY and where ye olde ferry village was.
Interesting "phase" problem, the first phase found some remains, the
headstones had been moved on and off the site to plow the narrow rich
river terrace, the "geezer" who knew where the stones were supposed to
go back to, was fired before they were replaced, and ended up in the
local highway department, as the tale went. One archaeological "phase"
was done, a line drawn on the ground, and another phase started which
I was involved in, winter (using shelter, toboggan and generator) and
summer to excavate further a well, then thought finished.
A youth visitor to the subsequent mechanical excavations found a skull
in the one of the dirt piles. Bulldozers had started to unearth what
had been thought about 1/4 acre cemetery which was actually a 1/2
acre, which a local descendant asserted she had been telling the sewer
authority involved in the "taking" of that part of the public park,
for years about, once also a former Dutch Reformed churchyard and 20th
century "youth farm" and "first" village disturbed by the railroad. An
interesting lime kiln had been found too with remote sensing provided
by Bruce Bevan who brought a whole "array" of instruments to test the
place in a day. Some of the last Federal monies for community sewer
projects was spent there, now "they're" on their own to float bonds,
etc. to meet U.S. Federal pollution discharge guidelines.
An interesting rock shelter "fall" was excavated there by the once New
York State Archaeologist Robert Funk who contributed much to the
prehistory of the Hudson River Valley, where once we would be
"divided" to be "conquered" (N.J. Parkways Commission) following up
on avocational archaeologists work that was also done recently in the
park.
Another cemetery I helped with the Jackson-Moore in Queens, NYC, had
stones that the WPA apparently put artistically there making public
works in the Great Depression, but had been broken somewhere else
(below the surface) hopefully on the property the Queens Historical
Society owns. Some of the decedents house had been used as a
headquarters in the "Battle of Long Island" which General Washington
lost, at a crossroads of "information" their participation found null,
so innocent after the American Revolution. For Celia Bergoffen, Ph.D,
RPA.
I have worked for a number of archaeologists on the "First Almshouse"
question in NYC City Hall Park, which was further excavated in the
summer of 1999, I came on late to it, though explored on two other
excavation projects by different archaeologists. I generally have some
question about the "First" designation, and its proximity to the
British Army Barracks and the Ol' Bailey or prison the NY Times
reported as "blacker than any black hole of Calcutta" in which its was
also reported by them (1904?) that patriot Ethan Allen was tortured by
a British Major Cunningham. Also I wonder how many archaeologists can
be switched onto a single research question without it getting
entirely switched into the lowest common denominator.
I have also worked at Sackett's Harbor, NY on Lake Ontario said to be
the "birthplace of the U.S. Navy" over the War of 1812 (Washington
D.C. was burned its stated for burning what has become Toronto) and
Zebulon Pike's remains location is still in doubt I read. We set aside
one part of the parade ground (with Angela Schuster of "Archaeology"
magazine lately, et al.) from condominium development when a follow up
of Berger, Inc., determination of scattered human remains turned up
more substantial remains, the remains of a wooden coffin buried just
below the modern surface.
George Myers
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