Fieldnotes
An Archaeology and CRM Blog
It seems to me that there are several phases in the reporting and investigation of Viking sojourns in North America....
Interest in Viking voyagers has even touched New York State, with various claims of Viking evidence from the vicinity of Lake Ontario (reachable, with determination, by longboat) to Lake Chautauqua (which would have required some pretty extreme portages).
The work of the archaeologists at these sites was performed at the request of Omni Housing Development, LLC. The archaeological project was carefully designed to recover information important to the history of the South End prior to construction in Phase 3 of Albany’s South End Revitalization, a project of the Albany Housing Authority.
Broad Street, 2012. Three teen boys made their way up Broad Street. Jay said good-bye to his friends at Fourth Avenue and continued up the street, past the new homes at the corner of Third. They had stopped by the archaeological dig on Alexander Street again today. They had watched for a while and talked some more with the archaeologists. It was definitely cool, Jay thought.
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.
Recently, Curtin Archaeological Consulting, Inc. has completed a final report on Phase 1 archaeological surveys, Phase 2 archaeological site evaluations, and Phase 3 data recovery projects conducted over a period of several years in the Vosburg Site Archaeological District, Town of Guilderland, Albany County, New York. This district contains the Vosburg site, one of the most important Archaic period sites in New York State, and sits between a significant pine barrens– the Albany Pine Bush– and Normanskill Creek. The projectile point type names “Vosburg” and “Normanskill” derive from early 20th century investigations in this area.
The “Missing 2000 Years” refers to the period 8,000-10,000 years before present (BP). The former New York State Archaeologist Robert E. Funk (2004:130) used this concept to refer to the poorly known Early Archaic period.
Recent articles and press releases have reported the Delaware valley study by Stinchcomb et al (2011) in which multidisciplinary research was able to conclude that Native Americans in the last 1,000 or so years had significantly changed the environment through forest clearing practices related to agriculture.
