The Gloves Come Off

[uniface]

Boy -- if this sort of thing keeps up . . . telling it like it is !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.recorder.com/sports/sportsco ... ing-issues

http://www.recorder.com/sports/sportsco ... leo-patter

[shawomet]

The site requires registration. Maybe you can copy and paste part or all.

[kbs2244]

And, maybe, this is in the sports pages because the Science Editor wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.
If he even knew it was going to be published.

[uniface]

And, maybe, this is in the sports pages because the Science Editor wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

If he even knew it was going to be published.

That was the most astonishing display of abrasive, ignorant malice I've ever seen here.

[uniface]

The first one :

I’ve found that most things happen for a reason. Take, for instance, Wednesday morning’s incoming mail.

Having heard the white USPS jeep pass a half-hour earlier while reading, I pulled my truck up alongside the mailbox to retrieve the mail on my way out of the yard to run the dogs. The first item to catch my eye was a flier from Cobb’s auction in Peterborough, N.H., the cover displaying the glossy color photo of a formal Chippendale chest of drawers similar in style to a friend’s recent purchase. The next item to pull me in was a pale, robin’s-egg-blue, greeting-card-sized envelope addressed to me below a paste-on return address from Kirk Spurr, the dean of diggers assisting Dr. Richard Michael Gramly on a recent archaeological excavation along the perimeter of an important Paleo-Indian site situated on a sandy terrace below Mt. Sugarloaf. Inside was a personal note and a compact-disk archive of photographs taken by Spurr, 83, and other participants during the important two-week dig performed by members of Gramly’s American Society for Amateur Archaeology on what is likely the hottest Paleo site this side of the Mississippi River, definitely sacred ground in the archaeological world.

Before I proceed, I suppose I should take a moment to explain to those who spend their free time perched in treestands with bow and arrows how a man penning an outdoors column can get drawn into writing about archaeological excavations. Well, all I can say is that hunting and fishing and the outdoors are still important to me, but not nearly as fascinating as 12,000-year-old Paleo hunters spearing caribou and wooly mammoths on my childhood haunts with stone, bi-faced weapons sharpened in an open-air workshop being uncovered before my eyes on Sugarloaf’s lap. Can it get any more interesting than that? Not in this man’s world.

But, back to Spurr — a man I observed performing various excavation chores, usually wearing a distinctive, tinted-billed straw hat, not to mention a palpable gleam of boyish enthusiasm — my indelible image of him was planted in my mind on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, Sept. 25, as the archaeological crew buttoned down its sophisticated, fine-tuned project for the night. My wife had spelled me in my son’s Springfield hospital room and told me in passing that a friend had left a phone message to say he was traveling to the site to meet an important Paleo scholar expected to arrive from France that afternoon. Good timing, I thought, having already intended to stop on my may through and see what was happening. Upon my arrival, I noticed local dig-liaison and Deerfield Historical Commission member David “Bud” Driver standing and talking to a thin, distinguished, bespectacled, gray-bearded man between the gabled ends of two barns stuffed with aromatic field tobacco. Driver signaled me over with his hand and introduced me to Duncan Caldwell, who I discovered was the very man my telephone pal thought I should know was due. I spoke for some time with Caldwell, a fascinating man and skilled conversationalist who was most interested in historical context of the site known to me as Hopewell Plain and the swamp below, which I was more than willing to provide, the rambling, dynamic conversation lasting perhaps 20 minutes, stopping just in time for us to wander toward the picnic table where the work crew gathered at the end of each day for casual conversation and laughs.

On our short walk to the table, capped with a cooler-ful of soft drinks, a few colorful pumpkins and items of discarded clothing here and there, Caldwell recognized Spurr standing near a wooden-framed, wire-screen sifter resting on sawhorses along the edge of a two-meter-square hole and greeted him with a warm hello and smile. He immediately walked over to him, shook hands and wrapped both arms around him in a brotherly embrace that told me Spurr — a retired Ph.D chemist with a Dartmouth and Cornell academic pedigree — was not anyone you’d call an amateur. Caldwell, a world-renowned expert in Paleo-Indians, was obviously greeting him as a peer and colleague, someone he had worked with many times before and for whom he held his deepest respect.

“They call us amateurs because we don’t get paid for this work,” Spurr explained in his quiet, humble, Ivy League way, “but we have more field experience than most working professional digs, which are usually manned by young college students.”

Another big difference I have sensed between professional and amateur archaeologists from personal observation is hesitance on the part of the former go public with site locations and reports. Not so with Gramly, who I watched drop whatever he was doing several times to walk a new arrival around the site explaining everything, and then some. A true educator with youthful exuberance and energy, Gramly never showed a trace of impatience or a hint that he was being inconvenienced. On the other hand, local academics have been digging locally for decades and largely keeping their reports and artifacts hidden from public view in the name of site preservation and protection. Not only that, but these folks, the haughty professionals, pejoratively refer to Gramly’s crews as “amateur,” even though a cursory review of their crews’ credentials would reveal an entirely different story. No one can call Gramly an amateur, he who holds the same Harvard degrees as his most outspoken critics, not to mention decades more experience. And the same can be said for most of the men and women who follow him from site to site as a faithful, competent crew.

“I was happy to hear Mike was leading this dig because I know he’ll publish something quickly that people can get their hands on,” said perhaps the world’s preeminent Northeastern lithics expert the first time we met on-site. And although this source didn’t go into detail and throw anyone under the bus, I knew the target was the secrecy and perhaps hidden agendas of state officials and some local academics who carry their water at digs conducted under state permit.

Although I won’t go overboard criticizing the state archaeologist and her UMass minions who deny they are secretive, then refuse access to their reports and artifacts, I know of two local landowners who permitted important archaeological excavations on their land over the past 20 years and have yet to see an accounting of the artifacts dug or the reports written. One of these landowners even sent a written request for a report and had received back not even the courtesy of a response at press time. Yet defenders of state policy claim that all reports are maintained by the Massachusetts Historical Commission and can be requested by interested parties. Of course, that doesn’t mean such a request will be approved. In fact, I’d say it’s unlikely that John Q. Public Citizen, or a newspaper for that matter, would have much success obtaining such reports. If you doubt it, give it a shot and see where it leads.

Gramly, a sophisticated scientist at the top of his game, is likely now in marathon analysis of the many artifacts collected over 14 days in Deerfield, and I know from speaking to him on-site that he is in awe of what was gathered and will publish in a timely fashion a comprehensive summary of his findings, something average readers purchase and understand. It is also likely that many others who participated in the dig will write their own accounts describing what it means in an assortment of magazines aimed at scholarly and average readers.

It’ll be interesting to see where this all goes and what the “official reaction” is. My suspicion is that the wheels are already spinning, someone’s unhappy with Gramly, and something is about to break. But my guess is that officials who make and enforce the rules will be very careful. Remember, given a choice, they’d rather sweep this stuff under the carpet than stir up a dust storm in the press, especially when the facts could turn public perception in the wrong direction.

[uniface]

The Second One :

Does anyone else have problems getting their head around small encampments of Paleo-Indian hunters spearing to death migrating caribou funneled through a tight ravine at the base of Sugarloaf some 12,350 years ago? Yes, mind boggling indeed, yet quite real.

I suppose what makes it all so unfathomable is the sad fact that the typical American citizen taught in the average American school is lost in a very intentional Christian/cultural fog that deceives most into believing that New England history began with the Plymouth pilgrims in 1620. If creative, curious and sophisticated, you may even want to begin with Leif Erikson and long-lost Vinland, circa 1000 AD, still to this day being hunted by scholarly explorers. Well, let me tell you a little secret: It all started way before the Vikings, secretive Basque fishermen or a Portuguese explorer named Christopher Columbus, and it was happening right here where we live, dating back between 12,000 and 13,000 years, maybe even a bit earlier. That was proven this week by radiocarbon dating performed on calcine (baked) bone fragments collected on a two-week archaeological excavation led from Sept. 7-21 by veteran, soon-to-be 67-year-old archaeologist Dr. Richard Michael Gramly, a Harvard Ph.D specializing in Paleo discovery, with the ground-breaking Vail Site in western Maine’s Rangeley Lakes Region and many other important sites to his credit.

Not one to putter around procrastinating over scholarly reports while storing artifacts in dark, locked vaults secreted far from public view, Gramly has been aggressively piecing together the clues uncovered with shovel, trowel and soft-bristled brush by his veteran, highly coordinated American Society for Amateur Archaeologists crew since he returned home on Sept. 21. After packaging and mailing his bone samples to Beta Analytic, a respected Miami, Fla., lab he and other top archaeologists have for 30 years used to date material, Gramly has continued to diligently pick away at the artifacts, attempting to reassemble broken pieces and comprehend precisely what it all means. Beta lab has already examined the bone and dated it to 10,350 years Before Present, plus or minus 50, which, according to Gramly, computes out to approximately 12,350 actual calendar years or to roughly the date 10,337 BC … mind-blowing indeed. That’s nearly 10,000 years before ancient Greece and Rome, more than 9,000 years before ancient Egyptian civilization coalesced.

Wow!

Truth be told, Gramly was a little disappointed with the date because what he had seen led him to speculate the artifacts gathered at the site dated back as far as the Vail Site he dug in 1980. Beta Analytic and another independent lab dated the bone collected there at about 350 years older, some 12,700 years old. But hey, a layman might ask, what’s 350 years in a picture so deep? And although that sounds like a reasonable assessment, Gramly says one should be careful not to dismiss 3½ centuries so haphazardly, saying 350 years is not in any way insignificant in the big picture. Much can change in three centuries, including such crucial factors as climate, glacier-melt and vegetation to name a few, and Gramly insists that archaeologists must pay close attention to the minutest details when interpreting prehistoric data. So, for the time being, he’s going to treat the Vail and Sugarloaf sites as apples and oranges, comparing the South Deerfield site bordering a sandy, agricultural Whately plain as a “sister site” to the famed Bull Brook Site of Paleo legend in Ipswich.

“That site sits 120 miles due east of the Sugarloaf Site,” said Gramly, reached at his North Andover home Tuesday. “We don’t know if we’re dealing with the same bands of hunters at the sites, or related bands, or if it was the same people migrating with the caribou herds from one site to the other. We may never know, but I’d sure like to know.”

Gramly’s most recent dig was his second at the Sugarloaf Site. Following his first dig — performed in 1995 on private abutting property that has since been purchased by the state and kept off-limits — Gramly wrote a book and gave all his field notes kept in India Ink along with reports and photos to Memorial Libraries in Deerfield. Not only that but he gave all artifacts to the rightful owners, the Whately family that owned the land before selling it under pressure from the state. That family has shown the artifacts to many, including New York scientists who are now trying to date them using new, state-of-the-art technology. But now Gramly has beat them to it, finally getting a definitive date after nearly 40 years of bureaucratic thumb twiddling fueled by professional/academic competition and bureaucratic thumb twiddling fueled by professional/academic competition and jealously. Gramly’s top priority on the latest venture was to date the site, and that has now been done thanks to the many bone fragments he was able to collect. Actually, he could have sacrificed the only bone fragment he found on his last dig 18 years ago but refused because it was the only piece of bone he found and he didn’t want to destroy it. In the near future, he’ll also be submitting an exciting collection of charcoal discovered in more than one two-square-meter pits, including one uncovered toward the end of the second week that what was believed to be a bowl-shaped fire pit. However, Gramly warned, “Charcoal dating is a little more risky. Sometimes a tree can burn right down to the roots, leaving charcoal. That’s why I wanted bones to date. Bone dating can’t be denied.”

In the meantime, Gramly is working furiously to put together a PowerPoint summary of the Sugarloaf dig he plans to unveil a few weeks down the road in Portland, Maine, where the prestigious Eastern States Archaeological Federation is meeting the weekend of Nov. 1. There, with rumors likely already swirling through scholarly Northeastern archaeological circles, Gramly will likely blow the cover off the Franklin County site, which he implores has sat idle long enough and should be explored further in search of habitation and kill sites there. If he can supply the wind behind the sails, that Sugarloaf Site could open the gates to long overdue exploration of other important Pioneer Valley prehistoric sites, places like Canada Hill overlooking once-sacred Peskeomskut waterfall in Turners Falls, the Bashin in North Hatfield, Kells Farm in Greenfield, sites in Northfield and Hadley and Sunderland and on and on and on.

“I don’t know what they’ve been waiting for,” said Gramly. “I’m a scientist and the inactivity makes absolutely no sense to me. How can they continue to ignore it? Here we have one of the most important Paleo sites in North America, one we’ve known about for more than 40 years, and they’ve been just sitting on it all this time. By now, in my opinion, there should have been 40 or 50 doctoral dissertations to come out of that site and related sites right there in your home, the Connecticut Valley, an archaeological treasure trove that needs to be explored.”

Asked if it’s likely there are earlier sites in the neighborhood, Gramly didn’t hesitate to answer in the affirmative.

“Yes, it’s very likely there’s just such a site not far away,” he said. “Bud Driver has a drill point of an earlier style that showed up prominently at the Vail Site, and it came from within a mile or two of Sugarloaf. I intend to investigate that site and talk to the farmer."

So, stay tuned: The days of public railing against this stuff as hysterical anti-development rhetoric and historical hooey may be over if Gramly has anything to say about. My guess is that a new clamor is building intense pressure and ready to blow. New spokespeople driving the message will be unimpeachable experts in their field, and the old boys trying to discredit and demean them will look foolish indeed, if not intentionally manipulative and, in the end, uninformed at best.

As for the staid academic cultural-resource managers committed to silence in the name of protection and preservation, well, we’ll see how it all turns out for them. They may yet figure out how to have it both ways.

“Can you imagine the state buying that first site I dug to prevent further study?” asked Gramly. “They paid almost half a million dollars for it. Just think what we could have done with a half-million to dig it.”

Something doesn’t smell right.

[kbs2244]

You don’t think the Science Editor has carefully cultivated and delicately maintained contacts within the State Archeology Department that would be upset with his publishing something like this?

It is, after all, not exactly complementary of them.

Assuming he did have prior knowledge of it being published, putting it in the Sports Pages gives him plausible deniability.

If that is the case, I applaud him.

[uniface]

How many little, local newspapers have employ multiple, specialised editors ? (At least the ones small enough to have remained independent). THE editor either OKs it or spikes it.

My apologies for having misconstrued your intent.

[kbs2244]

Well, I know nothing about the internal structure of the 7 newspaper group of local papers that this one is one of.
So my scenario is pure speculation.
And I am something of a cynic.

[Ernie L]

Our very own rift valley....of sorts...The local tribes attributed sugar loaf mountain to be the body a giant beaver...it died in the middle of the lake and became an island.....it indeed was an island 15000-12000 years ago...an ancient memory perhaps.....of lake Hitchcock and island created by the retreating glaciers ?

[uniface]

The Plot Sickens.

[C]ould it be a coincidence that out of the clear blue sky, quite by accident, I have been told of a new development that suggests perhaps it was a good thing I watched that dig and asked those questions when I did, because such opportunities may soon be impossible if Massachusetts House Bill No. 744 is passed in the dark of night before anyone in the Connecticut River Valley knows what hit them. Presented on Jan. 17 by Peter V. Kocot, D-Northampton, and co-signed by Hampshire County sister Ellen Story, D-Amherst, the proposed bill — the genesis of which I’m still not certain of but have my suspicions — is currently working its way toward enactment. If approved as expected, a Connecticut Valley oversight committee headquartered at UMass will be appointed “to preserve and protect the archaeological and fossil resources of the Commonwealth.” I don’t know what will change with a new Pioneer Valley archaeological watchdog on patrol, but suspect it will tighten the screws on future archaeological exploration here. Stay tuned. I must explore this bill and its aims before commenting further. But I must admit that at first whiff the smell is unpleasant, knowing who likely pushed it behind the scenes and why, while I also know other experts in the field who have reservations about these folks’ objectives, tactics and unaccountability.

All I can say is that I want to know more. I’d like to connect the Sugarloaf Site to Peskeomskut and South Hadley Falls and the Hamp Meadows and a certain balanced rock and prayer seat I know buried deep in a place known to some as The Four Corners. And I get the feeling that if this House Bill No. 744 goes through in the dark of night without public awareness and scrutiny, that future Paleo archaeology will be off limits except to selected pals in agreement with a small cabal of secretive stewards serving their own needs and padding their resumes.

I guess the least I can do at this late point is shed a dull ray of light into the shadow obscuring the bill; that and hope I won’t soon after imminent approval be proclaiming right here in this space that I told you so.

http://www.recorder.com/sports/sportsco ... ff-in-town

[shawomet]

The last paragraph is likely spot on. It likely will be an exclusive club that gets approval. There has been a rationale used for not digging, namely the belief, really a hope, that future generations will have more sophisticated testing methods, which implies that leaving sites that are not threatened alone is more responsible then excavating them. Salvage archaeology being the exception. At the same time, Gramly has expanded our knowledge of Paleo bands in the Northeast and treating amateurs as part of the process rather then enemies is, I believe, the proper thing to do. Responsible citizens deeply interested in their region's past are an asset and I think they have a right to be part of the process.

Very telling, to me, that the bill includes fossils. The Ct. River valley is rich in fossils from the Lower Jurassic Period, including dinosaur footprints extracted in commercial quantity(Granby's Quarry has operated for decades), plants, and nice fish fossils. And there are many places in the Ct. River valley of both Ma. And Ct. where individuals can collect.

[uniface]

They spin it 50 different ways from Sunday, depending on what they figure sounds noble and altruistic at the moment.

But when you boil it all down, it always comes to who gets to play with the toys.

Always.

The Kingons want them all for themselves. To the point of outlawing even surface hunting. "Criminal possession of an artifact" laws are probably on their drawing board.

Paleo sites are NOT in short supply. Honesty is. Which would, IMO, include taking public money to be an archaeologist without ever doing much archaeology at all, and keeping the results of the little you and your cabal do secret.

"Who gets to play with the toys" extends to "Who gets access to the information" as well.

I'd call it Embezzlement.