If you cannot move steel plates over an excavation, I have often thought a  
roll of chainlink could do the trick if you got those screw-type metal 
loops for  tying dog leashes on each corner and then simply chained and locked 
the  chainlink down. No bottle hunter in his right mind would cut through all 
 that.
 
Ron
 
 
In a message dated 7/25/2009 12:04:11 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
[log in to unmask] writes:

For some  of the reaction to the NY Times I read over at the New York 
Archaeological  Council's listing for PANYC the letter by Joan H. Geismar, 
Ph.D.  
President, Professional Archaeologist of New York City (PANYC). I would  
like to 
offer a few experiences.

On one site, which recently was  sold as the most expensive real estate in 
Manhattan, the former federal US  "Assay Site" we had an electronic transit 
or "total station" stolen while  guards were on duty, both apparently 
submitted 
and passed lie detector  tests. On the outside of those cases is the 
warning 
that all "Laser thefts  are investigated by the FBI" and I must say using 
it and 
its replacement I  was never questioned by them, nor anyone else.

On another site I recall  a taunting picture with the heads cut out of the 
Polaroid, sent reportedly  to the NYC Landmarks Commission by a group 
of "bottle hunters". It  prompted the further excavation there on site one 
early 
winter in Brooklyn  near Fort Greene where the "Prison Ship Martyrs 
Monument" 
is with some of  the remains of the over 14,000 who reportedly perished 
during 
the American  Revolution under what I theorize, due to recent formal 
British 
forensic  evidence, may have been a plot to poison the king by Admiral 
Cornwallis,  based on the amount of arsenic in his wig and proximal 
location. He 
who  also ran the occupation of New York city and his brother General  
Cornwallis were defeated after the long march by combined French troops  
marching from Rhode Island and meeting up with Washington's troops on the  
Hudson River, where the "divide and conquer" was to take place, separating  
the northern and southern colonies by the river and the chain of forts  
into 
Canada. Convinced by the facts of French naval support to have  success 
there instead of New York city, indeed the world was turned upside  down.

But I digress. On this site was also a sort of "squatters house"  and also 
it was 
reported a young minority individual was arrested and  taken into custody 
for 
being nosy about the site, surrounded as they are  in NYC by thousands of 
people, some not too happy on the deals perhaps  made with the Planning 
Commission or the various "uncollected" agencies,  i.e., no one "Building 
Department" that have various roles to play in  development sometimes 
out-of-
sync with each other and perhaps argue with  the community, which of course 
is no reason to gut features in a site.  However, I also wonder if 
vigilante 
protection might also get out of hand  and not particularly happy to have 
armed guards over it or reports of the  curious incarcerated over it.

Machinery is often available, also  sometimes vandalized, but however, 
perhaps 
large steel plates over a  feature or two would discourage looting and 
provide a 
safety factor for  the public. But as we know these jobs often have gone to 
the "lowest  bidder" either by fact or  design.


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