Early Archaic

Remembering Ralph S. Solecki, Who Discovered the Shanidar Neanderthals, the Hessian Hat Plate, and Ancient Maspeth

The riders found their seats as they piled into the subway car on a pleasant afternoon in 1985. Getting comfortable (no one had to stand), we were soon off on our return trip from Red Hook, Brooklyn to the EPA Region II offices in Manhattan. At first, I barely noticed one of my fellow passengers sitting a little away from me, but eventually I took in his distinctive

“Stone, My Friends: Humanity’s First Non-Renewable Resource”

“Stone, My Friends:  Humanity’s First Non-Renewable Resource”

The science fiction writer Isaac Asimov declared:  “Stone, my friends, was humanity’s first non-renewable resource.  Luckily there is so much of it that it never became scarce!”  In a seminar on the future of space as a non-renewable resource, it was clear where Asimov was going:  he was going to cover Alpha to Omega, everything from the origin of stone technology to the positioning of satellites in orbit, and further concerns beyond the earth’s gravitational pull.  But he didn’t spend long on stone, the resource that didn’t become scarce. 

Way Down Below the Ocean…Rising Sea-Level and the Atlantean Realms of the Post-Glacial World

Way Down Below the Ocean…Rising Sea-Level and the Atlantean Realms of the Post-Glacial World

Sea level has been rising since the glaciers of the last ice age began to melt about 18,000 years ago.  In December 2012, in National Geographic, Laura Spinney brought us a story on evidence for this that has been recovered from the North Sea and adjacent estuaries and shores.

An Early Archaic Radiocarbon Date from Wilton, New York

Last week the radiocarbon dating firm Beta-Analytic, Inc. provided a radiocarbon date for an archaeological feature excavated by Curtin Archaeological in the Town of Wilton, Saratoga County, New York.  The date is 8760 +/- 40 years before present (BP), which when calibrated to the actual range of calendar time (with near-100% certainty) is 7610-7950 BC.  This age falls within the poorly understood period that archaeologists in eastern North America refer to as the Early Archaic (8,000-10,000 radiocarbon years BP), and it is one of only a small number of radiocarbon dates of similar age associated with archaeological sites in New York State.