Subj:   Time lag
Date:   5/4/00
To: [log in to unmask]

Hello

I just finished the article quickly and will go back and read it again. I
couldn't agree more about the problem and the lack of concern for it in the
temporal analyses purported to be done every day. My particular criticism is
the basis of which we can or can't apply a technique. A ship chandlery may or
may not be exchanging goods for cash value but also in some of the categories
you described, that is carried aboard the ship by captain or crew, barter or
sale may go on for supplies. Possibly the newest materials therefore were not
carried in the hold but by the crew for emergencies or normal coarse of trade.

A site I'm thinking of was the Captain Brewster Hawkins shipyard and
chandlery. Unfortunately it produced the "Wanderer," about 1858 the "last
slaver" the business was involved in the 19th century from about 1830 onward,
in a rebirth of shipbuilding, of which the original in the 18th century
little has survived in the record or in ships. The packets for Liverpool,
England used to stop in port every two weeks and supplies and mail was
carried over seas from this former Tory headquarters that supplied General
Washington with much needed information from a "ring of spies," Setauket, NY.

The documentary evidence prior to the "rebirth" was little and scarce, other
than about the events of the American Revolution, that transpired. So the
record of ships or how maybe many of the materials arrived there not clear.
What was clear however was a trade exchange probably going on to Connecticut.
Long Island had not one natural waterfall, and early tidal mills were used,
though developed after first bringing grain to Connecticut first in this case
and then the price thought to high across the Long Island Sound. On the
Brewster Hawkins House site was a beautiful copper "stock buck" a buckle to
hold up a sword sash, usually then over the shoulder, that was traced to a
particular silversmith in Connecticut in the records of the arts museum there
by me. It had a date of around 1725 and generally agreed with some of the
other dates collected from a surface scatter. The house had just been bought
by Dr. John Lee, a psychiatrist whose family was from Massachusetts and his
wife Debbie from "Old Viginnie" and a septic system installed causing someone
to come and look at the artifacts since the Town of Brookhaven requires it in
it's historic district. I dug one small test unit for his then young
children's sand box. I would have thought it re-landscaped had it not like
whole slip-trailed "milkpans" lying in the ground interstitially splitting
between glazes like tossed or left out on the ground to form paths to "lost"
outbuildings. One survives next to it a small "icehouse" with a brick lined
pit too deep according to the owner to be a privy, though small enough to be
confused with an outhouse. Pity the person that steps through that door! I
was in a new college mega-dorm in Buffalo, NY, and almost did the same five
stories into an empty elevator shaft. part of the "initial occupancy" at the
Amherst campus.

Remarkably last summer I went through the Lord Shipyard on Shelter Island,
NY. This shipyard produced the "Paragon" which once outran the Napoleon
blockade of England, to Liverpool. I suppose some ships made it through but
the amount of ceramics and trade was probably small, if at all. I don't know
what the "Paragon" carried. (another "Paragon" the British destroyer was sunk
by German subs during the "Dover Raids," March 17, 1917, according to the
Encyclopedia Brittanica. The Encyclopedia's current owners are the money
backers of Woody Allen films according to the Sunday Daily News of April 30,
2000)

Again I think the article is very well written and really does no overstate
the case. I look forward to its publication. I have been driven nuts by
exactly a lot of the factors you bring up and have tried to argue with some
people about it. At least they may understand it better this time. I have
argued why not use all the techniques now that we have computers on our
desktops? One can even run remote programs that give dates and statistical
relevance on the measurements of projectile points for the Northeast, why not
apply as much as we can to create better data, and thereby better results.

George J. Myers, Jr.