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