A Mountain with a View

HAZEx finally has a great big site ready to add to the National Register of Historic Places and accession (protect) at the New York State Museum! We teamworked since last April to make this possible with my favorite Soil Scientist (Dr. Wah at Metapeake Inc.) Dr. Abel and his fellow NYSAA experts like Tom Weinman, and a great volunteer class of aspiring explorers from Ithaca’s Lehman Alternative School. The site collection is soon to be available to researchers from across the globe.

This is a bit of the site description for your information.

Site Age:

Early Archiac (Lamoka & Bifurcate projectile point / knives) 8,000-6,000 BC

Middle Archaic (Normanskill, Vosburg ppk) - Vosburg ppk excavated from within the stump of a tree radio-carbon dated to 340 +/-30 years before the present (Beta #331577 – MVEPC-fea2w). 6,000-4,000 BC

Late Archiac (Rossville, Snookkill, Susquehanna, stemmed ppk) 4,000-1,000 BC

Middle Woodland (Greene, Jack’s Reef ppk) 1,000 BC-950 AD

Possible Late Woodland (Levanna ppk) 950-1492 AD

Brief Site Description:

The site consists of a diffuse chipped stone artifact scatter covering at least 70 acres in the Town of Coxsackie, New York near Climax Creek. The portions of the site currently identified are within a prehistoric wetland overlying the former Lake Albany located at a distance of at least 600 meters from the closest permanent water source. This area of level pasture was investigated though systematic shovel testing, dead-furrow trenching, test units, and a series of visual inspections across a plowed and disked surface along close-interval (3 meters) transects. A total of 807 prehistoric artifacts were documented and collected during these investigations. Geomorphological analysis of the vertical extent of the site indicated that all artifacts were confined to plow-zone soils or recent bioturbation. GIS analysis of the horizontal extent of the site revealed 18 concentrations of artifacts showing land-use patterns consistent across millennia and providing evidence for site disturbance from “relic hunters” in the southern portion of the site nearer the village.