In a message dated 6/7/2006 8:36:21 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
[log in to unmask] writes:

http://www.poststar.com/articles/2006/06/07/news/doc44864d99ede07305807864.txt



Ok, I read those latest articles and the most telling evidence is the fact  
they used a "front end loader" to cut a swath through the cemetery. To their  
credit, the burials have been pedestalled in place, but has anyone seen their  
field notes, drawings, and photographs? Moreover, the photos I did see did not 
 reveal a standard excavation grid. The soil was just heaped outside the dig  
area, not in piles under a shaker screen, which looks more like a looter's 
pit  than an archaeology project. I guess we ought to wait to hear from the New 
York  SHPO, assuming they would share their findings with us and not their 
state  attorney general. 
 
I think the point here is that we all have known interested amateurs who  
want to make discoveries on their own and become famous before they die, so  
venture out collecting and pot-holing on weekends. In states with weaker laws,  
where land owners allow collecting, and where amateurs get hired as property  
managers, it is easier for the untrained to justify collecting and digging.  
Heck, most of the people who went through field school with me over the years  
probably went out collecting at some point in their lives. We even had a  
discussion a few months back that smoked-out federal employees (one a land  manager) 
who are hobby collectors and diggers. We have to draw a line in the  sand as 
to how we distinguish a professional and am amateur. Beyond academia,  there 
is the Register of Professional Archaeologists and that has been the line  I 
have drawn in the sand. I am very sorry to learn that American history has  been 
compromised by a mechanical front-end loader and two adventurers who could  
not wait to bring-in professional archaeologists to investigate this very  
important site in a proper manner.
 
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.