Having recently been invited by Nick Bellantoni, Connecticut State Archaeologist, (11-26-07 e-mails) to contribute, as I might see fit, to "...a repository on some of the early excavators and collectors for future researchers....", I thought I would take him up on his offer. Of course, in this sense, "early" begs for clarification somewhat – as many of "us" half a century or more ago, were concerned to know of the work and findings of still earlier workers – of whom I must say, we had been taught to make acknowledgement in our summations and publications, and whose names therefore are yet there in our publications for the diligent to recover. (Along with many other "dis-improvements" in archeological education and performance, this acknowledgement of one's forerunners seems to have been much abandoned by later workers...). Nick's (unhappy?) choice of the word "collectors" may also grate on some ears, and I hope I do not appear unduly thin-skinned in due course here, but "collectors" can have a pejorative ring for many of us – being as it is (still) strongly allied with "pothunters" in so many minds. I shall address this issue further on, letting it all hang out, too – as to "pothunters" et al – but also noting the many discourtesies, blind spots, and indeed, non-professional work and attitudes of those with – or seeking – or already arrived at (!) - Degrees in this very field of anthropology as well.

A further clarification: this would doubtless be a bit more accurate and a few more "forgotten" names recalled, etc. were my records at hand at this writing. But they are not. I am currently resident in Florida, and my notes and files (promised for curation separately elsewhere to Nick) are still in Connecticut – in deep storage with many of my domestic belongings at a warehouse in New Britain. When I get settled again, I shall send for them, but the point is that this document is being largely done from brute memory (perhaps a brute's memory would satisfy some better...), aided a bit by such cross-checking as can be done with the aid of my website to which the reader is urged to repair for more detailed presentations and documentation.

Since I celebrated my 80th birthday this summer past, it just seems rather more prudent to do this now, rather than wait for some ultimately more convenient time and surroundings... (Again, the reader is referred to said website for many of the places and observations herein recorded – for therein are reproduced some 20 to 30 published reports on my sites and archaeological observations in Connecticut, and indeed parts of nearby New York and Southern New England generally, around the latter half of the preceding century. I trust this way of referring to these stirring events – and various persons therein – lends the desired "hoary" touch to my accounting).

Whence the Itch? I was raised (variously) in towns in Texas, and my first foray into "site hunting" was discovery of an ash-filled rock overhang in the "Breaks of the Brazos" one hot summer when I was about 14 at Boy Scout camp. Quannah Parker himself and his fellow "Commanch' " may indeed have sheltered at Worth Ranch , if you like. (Even more at bottom of: Cowtown ).

But it was to be many years later, after I was now a discharged Vet of WWII, attending NYU under the so-called GI Bill, and now resident in southwestern Connecticut, that my incipient archaeological interests were to stir again. This was the summer of 1950 – and after a personal letter to Frank Henry Hanna Roberts at the Smithsonian (whose name should not be unknown to any pretender to American archaeology), I was accepted into an S.I. field party then a-making in Lincoln, Nebraska. (My father – no archaeologist he! – had read in the NYT earlier, that Roberts, his old school chum, was "hiring college students to dig up Indians" or some such out West that summer, and "Maybe you would like to do that.. ") He (my father), Roberts, and the celebrated Newshawk of yesteryear: Lowell Thomas, Sr., had all been members of the same graduating class at East Denver High School (Colorado) long years before....

And thus I was hired on as a shovel-hand, reporting for duty by late June with a Smithsonian Field Party slated to excavate sites along the Middle Missouri in central South Dakota. (It was all actually part of the River Basin Surveys program, in turn operated by the Bureau of American Ethnology, which had been launched in some desperation to conduct "salvage archaeology" just about everywhere as a check against the ravages of the Army Corps of Engineers – which was equally everywhere hellbent on damming every river and crick in the United States, as a so-(ill?)-conceived "flood control program" whose impoundments were even then destroying thousands of prehistoric (and historic) sites along these very waterways.

The events of that tumultuous summer may be sampled somewhat at My First Dig . Suffice to say, that the general managerial incompetence and actual "lawlessness" of "real archaeologists" there recorded, were my introductions to formal archaeology in the field – for better or worse. Having, in any event, there learned firsthand some professional field techniques of site survey and excavation (and recording!), and of how little really professional work had been then done anywhere in the U.S. generally, I decided to devote myself to some researches of my own around my (then) hometown of Greenwich (Connecticut) when I returned.

Mianus Gorge: Late that summer (1950), I was back in Connecticut, and fired with enthusiasm, decided to undertake my first field surveys for a (possible) workable site. This led me to an earlier haunt... the then-still-wild Mianus River Gorge north of Stamford. At that time, the huge Reservoir (near the western end of whose dam, I was many years later to discover the Mianus Gorge Rockshelter , had not yet been built, and one could walk along many miles of the Mianus itself – little more than a trout stream in those days – which flowed through the bottom of the "Gorge". My very first finds were marine clam shells in a glade or small open field which was roughly just about where the New York/Connecticut state line crosses here (see map in above report). These were at some depth in an exploratory trench dug in the field, but nothing else was forthcoming, and time was limited... The site today is under maybe 30 or 40 feet of water – who knows? – having been "drowned" by the reservoir long ago. But marine clam at this inland spot must certainly relate to prehistoric activities and is noted for the record here. Marine clam and scallop (1 fragment) were noted many years later and some miles south of here in the Rockshelter proper.

Indian Field: My first hint that IF might harbor signs of aboriginal occupancy came via a long-vanished friend of my sister's – who, for some reason or another, had "...climbed a fence" here, and trespassed in a neighboring cornfield (as she reported) where the plow had disclosed "many dumps of seashells." She (the friend) may have been an archaeology student or a collector or something – she had some kind of knowledge of clues or whatever ... but she vanished early-on, and I cannot remember who she actually was at all. This would have been about 1951.

I went to the place she indicated and verified numerous clam shell pits in said field, exposed by plowing. This was on the grounds of a then-large estate – the Greenway Family Estate. The Greenways lived in a veritable mansion much further out on the "Point" which terminated in the waters of Long Island Sound. They maintained a working dairy farm here, and the corn was grown as feed for their stock. I got in touch with a Jim Greenway – who was acting " head of the family" at the time (he was a world-famous, very famous!), ornithologist with the AMNH, as it turned out... and thus quite favorably disposed to the "young scientist" who presented himself as interested in digging in his cornfields.... An elderly "Mrs. Greenway" was then still living there as well – a most gracious Grand Dame type, indeed – and I believe she was in fact, the daughter of one George Lauder – who had been an uncle of Andrew Carnegie and a main driving force behind Carnegie Steel (later U.S. Steel) in the days of the Robber Barons. The family excelled at "great names out of the past" – one of the Greenways was also onetime chairman of the Metropolitan Opera Company, among other exalted social achievements.

Old Mrs. G., too, was very interested in the "young college man" who showed up every Saturday to dig in her fields and gardens, and more than once had me "...into tea" in a sunlit parlor that overlooked Goose Island, I believe it is (was) named – right offshore from the estate, and part of their holdings. She was intensely interested in my supposition that Indians had once lived on their land (as was Jim C., as well) and they lent me every encouragement and courtesy. She often told me of earlier days when she and others had found "great quantities" of "arrow points" during picnics and visits on the beach at Goose Island, and had thus come to the conclusion that the Indians had once "had a great battle there." (It was and is, my later conclusion that these projectile points likely relate to "drowned" occupational phenomena at, or perhaps just offshore, from Goose (I only rowed out there once or twice, and do not recall ever finding anything) a la the much later "drowned midden" finds I made at Spruce Swamp further east down the Sound to Norwalk – and the Pilot's Point finds yet further east still, formally reported by the late Frank Glynn. in NYC, by the way).

Working largely alone, I surveyed IF intently for several years – toward the end of which time – the Highway Engineers arrived to "take out" part of the upper cornfield for the emplacement of I-95 on the western shore of the Mianus, where it crosses over the upper reaches of the Harbor to the east side. These engineers, too, were most supportive of me in my studies and actually "held up" more than one bulldozer pass, so that I might record some feature about to be obliterated. (They even had me up to their Hartford headquarters one evening, to a dinner, where I addressed their association about our finds and what we were doing). Most of these details are recorded in the Indian Field report and may be further ascertained there. One interesting fact in passing may not be: this bridge span here is the very one that mysteriously collapsed one summer night in 1983, sending several hapless drivers to their deaths far below and tying up vital I-95 (over which a tremendous volume of the nation's goods move daily) for months and months. It was national news . And yet one more item, as it illustrates so well the cross-purposes of much of Connecticut archaeology as I knew it way back when: this is the truly outrageous "rediscovery" of the site long after my published report was gathering dust on the shelves of the public library, by wet-behind-the-ears anthropology students (including several from Columbia...) and a gullible "popular" Archaeology Club (of Greenwich) and the subsequent staging (by them) of a gala Field Day event there – which both Louis Brennan (who likewise should need no introduction to any reader here) and I attended - and which "rediscovery" I neatly skewered midway of the "party"...! This debacle has been covered separately by me elsewhere and filed with Nick earlier: hopefully it may be retained and/or made a part of this chronicle, of which it is most deservedly a part. (Later):... In the interests of keeping most of these thughts together, I have looked up this item again, and have decided to insert it here. See immediately below:

The So-Called Greenwich Archaeology "Club": Back in the '70's or thereabouts, being then still a resident (in good standing as is said) of Connecticut, USA... I received an "invitation," or perhaps I just read it in the daily newspaper – I don't really recall - that a certain Archaeology Club – calling itself, I believe, the Greenwich Archaeology Club, in fact – (Greenwich, CT, USA) was planning a "field trip" to an "exciting" new archaeological find by professional archaeologists "somewhere" within the city's confines, and that one and all were being invited to attend a gala Field Day, then being planned at the new findspot. (Whether this organization still exists today is unknown to me).

Since, I did indeed, have an interest in same, I hied me to the meeting spot – the old "Put's Tavern" atop "Put's Hill" – a onetime incline west out of Cos Cob on old Route 1 – the Boston Post Road, so-called – but long since dug, re-dug, levelled, possibly raised anew (like Lazurus from his grave), graded, re-graded and all that sort of thing... (The reader must understand that I am a long time gone from those environs and am now in my dotage – 80 big ones – going for whatever additional I can steal from the hands of Fate...)

"Put's Tavern" is short for "Israel Putnam's Tavern" – a celebrated watering spot (more idiom?) still in that vicinity, which is said to be the very tavern where famed Colonial General Israel Putnam was taking his gin-and-bitters when news came, back during the late Revolt of the Colonies, (on this side of the Pond, we know it simply as the American Revolution) that the Brits were advancing from the West along selfsame Post Road and what was he going to do?

What he "was going to do" – now enshrined in local lore – is what he did: jump out the window and ride his horse down the steep declivity of "Put's Hill" – (to the East, be it so noted) - and (continued) fame as Connecticut's true son and stalwart, who in the end helped rid our shores of selfsame pesky Brits and all that sort of thing... (Dear Brits: please forget that "pesky" part: you weren't there and neither was I, and my father (God Bless!) always said: "No story should suffer in the telling!").

And so I repaired me to "Put's" and there I met an old compadre: the late Louis Brennan – he of early Hudson River Valley archaeological investigations (Croton Point being one) and area newspaper Editor – the Ossining, NY newspaper as I recall...?). He had driven over from Westchester County to partake of the proceedings. We joined forces, (ie. had a few drinks), and then boarded the waiting bus. To Louis' repeated queries: "Where or what is this "new" site in an area you have long covered for years, Bernie?" I could only shrug my shoulders and look out the bus' window...

Imagine my surprise then, when we turned off on Indian Field Road and pulled into the Parking area by the onetime Greenway Estate holdings...

We de-bussed... and the group wandered up into a then (still!) open field – just east of a very familiar (to me!) grove of pine trees. We all spread out in a big circle, and took seats in the grass.

Our interlocutor for the day, a little sort of wizened, balding guy – head of the aforesaid Club, took over and began to speak.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," he intoned, "Today we stand – or sit, as may be – on the site of an ancient village, which long before Columbus, was occupied by American Indians." (This was a bit before "Native Persons" supplanted plain old "Indians" in the popular modspeak of today...). "And here is where just a few weeks ago, a professional anthropologist (who shall herein go nameless, partly out of loss of memory on my behalf, and partly out of respect to whatever further advance he (or she) has made in their chosen field...) recently found "evidences" of these ancient people's activities right on this very spot!"

Ooooh! Ahhhh! – collective sighs from the group seated in aforesaid grass).

Then our wizened interlocutor held up a sherd of Indian pottery in his hand! "Ladies and Gentlemen," he went on – "This is a piece of Indian pottery made centuries ago right here in this field - at my very feet in fact - where this small trench has been dug by our archaeologist guides..."

(More Oooooh's! Ahhhh's! – accompanied by nods to "our" guides...).

"Our archaeologists here have found this just today before you arrived. (Waving the sherd about).

Then he turned somewhat reflective – in a sort of "Alas! Poor Yorrick" style – "And since this is just a fragment or potsherd, as we call them, you see – one wonders what the rest of the vessel might have once looked like..."

At this juncture I could stand no more. I jumped to my feet and interrupted the speaker.

"Why, I can tell you what it looked like", I said. A few heads swiveled my way in puzzlement.... "Because it is a fragment out of a pot I excavated in this same spot – I believe you are standing , in fact, in about Unit 200N/1100E of my onetime excavation grid here – and the vessel is (or was) reminiscent of a Classons Point Check-Stamped ware – not unknown here in Southern Connecticut, dating from somewhere in the immediate centuries before Contact. As to what it looked like, you may see my b&w pen drawing thereof in my published report on your "new found site" here – where it stands on the shelf of the public library in Greenwich since about 1958 or thereabouts!"

A big hubbub and general murmuring was beginning to sweep over the seated guests and the little guy's eyes were bulging in his head.

"Sir!" he roared, "Who are you, and what do you mean interrupting my talk this way!?"

"I'll tell you who I am," I replied. "I am Bernie Powell, that's who, and I am the discoverer of this site some ten or 15 years ago, and with the then-landowners permission, I excavated here back then over several seasons and my published report in an accredited archaeological journal has been freely available to anyone who knows how to do this kind of work long since!" I thought he was going to have apoplexy right on the spot and he and I were getting close to where push becomes shove. A couple of the young "professional" students (who had "discovered" the site) immediately sized up the situation and shamefacedly admitted that they had not "done their homework" when researching their recent surface finds. Louis Brennan stood up beside me. (As a national author of a onetime Book-of-the-Month Club selection (http://cgi.ebay.com/Beginners-Guide-to-Archaeology-by-Louis-A-Brennan_W0QQitemZ4631318897QQcmdZViewItem ) for amateur archaeologists - and recognized authority on many ancient sites in the nearby Lower Hudson Valley, Louis carried some cachet even with this largely uninformed audience here). Sensing the deepening rift between me and the pipsqueak Club president, he grabbed my elbow and in a voice loud enough for all to hear, said: "Bernie... archaeological research in Westchester County and adjacent New York State, is often a thankless task... but I must say that when so-called archaeologists have the chutzpah to "discover" and excavate - as a new-found site (!) - a site which has long since been reported in the literature – as your Indian Field Site here has been, then – then all I can say is that the archaeological situation in Connecticut is total chaos!"

Still holding my elbow, Louis added, "I think we should leave now. There is certainly little here of interest to serious workers."

And with that Louis and I made our departure from the scene.

True story, my friends, just as it happened. Quite some time later, one or two of the "professional" archaeologists-in-training who had stumbled upon my onetime site, called me on the phone and I think one or two wrote notes of apology. They were quite upset over their blunder as well they might be (!) - the FIRST thing you do when contemplating field work, is to RESEARCH THE LITERATURE to see if anyone or anything has been done about the area of your interest!). This is a sine qua non of archaeological field work. "They" tendered their apologies – which I accepted at face value. I do not recall their names at all – but believe several did indeed go on to achieve their degrees in the field and perhaps even to further later work in Connecticut – at this late date I simply cannot recall. Most of them were grads and undergrads from the Anthropology Department at Columbia University in nearby New York City... a faculty and students, for my money, that excelled in turning out discourteous and boorish professional archaeologists. (I was to have yet other "run-ins" with same in the years which lay ahead...).

And I would be remiss if I did not draw the reader's attention to the very odd "coincidence" (and aren't all 'coincidences' odd just by definition...?) outlined more fully at the very end of the addenda to my original report, wherein I cite the near 1:1 verisimilitude of a famous painting: "An Inlet On Long Island Sound" by John Frederick Kensett – one of our country's foremost landscape painters – painted in 1865 (!) - to the precise way IF looked when I began my work there, 85 years later! Even the then- current and very same transient weeds, trees, and bushes (!) - were depicted in his earlier painting! Nowhere did Kensett identify the painting's exact locus – but he was a Connecticut resident and native... I am not a mystic, so offer no "other worldly" explanations for same – other than just to cite it, and invite the reader's attention to same... Adding to the mystery, as I understand it, is an attempt in recent years to 'dethrone' its location as an "inlet on Long Island Sound" – and move it rather further north and east – to a supposed site on the Rhode Island shore...

Suggs: About this time I met a guy named Suggs – Robert, was it? He was then a student at Columbia (!) and working toward a degree in anthropology. He had recently "found" a site of occupancy out on Tod's Point (Old Greenwich), which I visited with him once or twice at his invitation. He eventually published on this site (Manakaway) in the ACS Journal. We would "bump" into one another now and then over the next few years – but never developed any real friendship or common interest, as best I recall. Suggs was rather standoffish and difficult, and was the first in a succession of such "aloof" Columbia undergrads, such as were to play through the southwestern CT archaeological scene over succeeding years. Their professors (more anon) seemingly imbued the lot of them with a sort of "zeal" perhaps it was – I don't know – but they telegraphed largely disdain and distrust of anyone else likewise interested in history or prehistory of this area – who "lacked" (in their view) proper "credentials," or was not working toward a degree in the field. Independent research in science was quite apparently unknown (or untaught) to them, and they more or less considered all such as little more than "pothunters" at worst – or misinformed collectors and disturbers of sites at best. I lost touch with Suggs early on, but heard somewhere he had followed an earlier interest and returned to the South Pacific where he conducted "anthropological tours" or some such for visitors to the Marquesas Islands (?)

Paul G. Howes: One who lent me much early support and encouragement in these efforts to establish prehistoric sequences and events in this archaeological terra incognito east of the Hudson, was the late Paul G. Howes, Curator of the Bruce Museum at Greenwich. Paul had then on display (this was long before the stultifying inanities of NAGPRA and other "bone worship" adherents had come into force), some remains he had excavated "... at the entrance to a lady's driveway off Indian Field Road" some years before. As well as my sister's friend's report, these finds had directed my attention to the Indian Field area as a region to survey. Paul also had one or two osseous fragments, I believe, (including a cranium) plus some stone debitage which he had once reclaimed "...from a glacial gravel bank off Laddins Rock Road near the Stamford town line." I subsequently located this same bank; it was then quite exposed to the weather and casual visitation by anyone passing on the road. It proved negative to my further testing at that time, but served to alert me to the potential here of all this then-yet-undeveloped Laddins Rock land for future finds – which were indeed, forthcoming many years later: see Some Connecticut Burials.

At Paul's suggestion, I also tested one or more small "rock shelters" or really rock overhangs, in nearby Bruce Park (adjacent his Museum). We found marine shells at several, but all had been long since greatly disturbed by collectors or others – perhaps including the legendary "Leatherman" of long ago - and proved largely negative. The "Leatherman" association I only just recalled: it played an important consideration in evaluating historic materials in many of our rock shelters. I trust my stored field notes may clarify this further when I get to them once again.

ASC: I became increasingly "active" with the ASC and in due course discussed my finds with "Ben" Rouse at Yale – who was quite interested in the IF finds, and encouraged me to publish. There were no "chapters" or meetings in Greenwich or Stamford at that time, and the drive up to New Haven was still a bit of a chore in those pre-I-95 days, but I did my best to attend the monthly get-togethers and came to know Lyent Russell, Frank Glynn, "Gus" Pope I think it was, and a Ruth Somebody (Gallinat, was it?) - something like that. And there were others, too, whose names now escape me. Doug Byers I never recall meeting. These contacts, however, widened my horizons some – but not that much (!). The monthly meeting "scene" was become by the time I arrived, a virtual time-warp: stuck like a needle in a broken record: Russell at these meetings intoned endlessly on over and over and over about what was apparently the world's longest continually investigated archaeological dig – Graniss Island off New Haven. Nothing new was ever found, reported, or introduced and the script seemed the same month after month. Another "event" of the time was Glynn's cryptic reporting on his Pilot's Point finds and the then just being appreciated (perhaps) implications of rising post-glacial sea levels in Long Island Sound and the likelihood of "drowned" deposits immediately off the CT shore... Little note was made of the pioneering work of Brennan or Ritchie in nearby New York State, nor of the Assawompsett and other finds in Massachusetts to the north. New Jersey was "out of the loop" for sure, and insularity ruled the ACS with an iron hand.

The publication program was moribund. So many issues had missed their publication dates, that nothing ever appeared – when it did – in the month (even year!) of its "issue." Added to this dereliction, was an even more screwed-up "Back Issues Program" – dedicated to re-issuing 'favored' editions out of times long past. Since everything that was done or contemplated was now "past" – it was really an impossible situation.

Glynn (who was then president) asked me if I would "take over" Editorship of this chaotic journal situation. (My name likely went into the hat because I had in my career, been variously a professional editor for several technical magazines, and also a science editor for two major encyclopedias. In short, I was a "pro" writer and wordsmith (later to add the acid test of Madison Avenue agency writing to my armamentarium), and they – and I – anticipated that maybe I could bring order out of this chaos).

Alas! It was not be. It was not to be because there were too many cooks in the broth, as is said. (Or once used to be said...). At the Board's request, I undertook first to issue this "Back Issue" number that all were absolutely panting to see once again in print. (I personally felt that publishing some of the current papers coming on, and encouraging some of the younger members toward publishing as a valid means in this field, would have been better investment of the limited funds). But I did as they wished. I negotiated a contract with a new printer (one known to me) and got a much better deal. I cleaned up the typefaces and gave a much better layout and "feel" to the whole affair. All of this raised some howls from the reactionaries aboard – but the real straw that broke the camel's back was some totally illegible early settler's map of some kind, with phonetically-derived Indian place names scrawled upon it, which was to be included – and I had the temerity to clean this up a bit and set the names in readable type... for this and other derelictions I was served up with 101 charges of editorial outrage! LOL!

However this "Back Issue" did finally go to press and ultimately appear. The real dog in the manger was now to issue forth: yapping. And this was no other than Dr. "Ben" Irving Rouse. Rouse had submitted a very long and rambling discourse (I remember it well!) on his (and others?) oft-regurgitated investigations at a site called the "Guida Farm Site" or something close to that name, up in northern Connecticut somewhere. The site had been pawed over by generations of diggers and even Guida family members (it was an important site withal, but don't ask me now what for...!). But Rouse in this particular paper was summing it all up at long last, and all were awaiting same with bated breath! And the archaeological data were there – I am sure. But along the way "Ben" had decided to play at being a creative writer and it was filled with hot air and barbarisms at the turn of nearly every paragraph.

One example I recall in particular related how a railroad ran through or near this site, and he had penned in how at night the long howl of the whistle and the rumble of the engines, etc. etc. echoed through these ancient lands and woods, etc. etc. purple passion on and on and on. Since we were limited (quite!) for space in the Bulletin, and "words were money" in this or any publishing venture, and such flights of fancy were not really for scientific reports in the first place, I made so bold as to suggest to Rouse that either he (or I) edit out all this extraneous prose, and keep just to the scientific description of the work and finds at hand.

Ahhh! Hell hath no fury like an anthropologist scorned! Rouse went bonkers! (And in so doing betrayed yet another failing that I was to note among "professionals" as the years sped by: a degree in anthropology, you see, is actually to be seen as a "degree in ALL things!") So there, too! Writing and verbal skills included, of course! Rouse, no less than many others, degreed or not, held apparently to the view that it is just nonsense for some (like editors or writers) to maintain (as many do) they write (or speak) "better" than their fellows – for obviously, of course (!) we all speak and write....right? (no pun!)... and to claim one does this "better or more efficiently," than one's fellows is like saying one "breathes" better than his fellows – for (equally obviously!) we all breathe! (Don't we?)

Everyone jumped on board and everyone took sides. Some kind of Captain's Mast or Kangaroo Court was a-borning - but I solved it all handsomely for them, by telling them to go stick it where the sun don't shine – and quit Editorship, ACS, and the lot, on the spot! Forever! Amen! LOL!

I never heard a peep again from "Ben" Rouse or anyone else, including Frank Glynn (if memory serves, he was a onetime postmaster at Clinton...?), who had taken up quite a censorious position toward me about it all. My only supporter I heard of third hand only long, long after – Lyent Russell (fer gosh sakes!). LOL! My informant telling me that in closed session once, Lyent had opined that "Bernie Powell is the only real scientist working with us on these things, etc. etc." – which proved some comfort in any later hours of doubt...

Sigh!

"Why can't professionals find sites?" Before we leave ASC altogether, I must note one "humorous" event that took place one day – and this was a Society field trip to Samp Mortar Rock (an area I was to report more fully on in years to come). However, that was yet to be at the time. Gathered together this day was a roster of Connecticut's finest: I'm not sure "Ben" was there; he often didn't make field appearances, as I recall. But Glynn was there for sure, and maybe Russell, and Ruth Whomever, and at least six or seven other "names" in the field. The mission was to check out the area (once again: had been done several times before) and see if "any sites for excavation" could be found. We set off "Indian fashion" single-file down the pathway through the woods. (I imagine "Indian fashion" is now considered racist in pop modspeak – but there's no teaching an old dog new tricks, so I shall just push racially on...).

Bringing up the rear (I was next to last), was Ted Jostrand – a longtime collector in Fairfield County, and later associate of mine – about whom I will have more to say later. We trotted along through the woods "eyeballs out" as the flying fraternity sometimes puts it – and eventually we all paused for a breather and to compare notes. At which point Ted, bringing up the rear – and last man in line to tread where at least seven other "heavies" (I hesitate to say "experts") had trod before him, came up to us and opened his fist to reveal two crudely chipped, quartz Lamoka points recovered from the trail by him after the rest of us had just passed over the same spots... (!).

There were one or two embarrassed moments and Ted was "complimented" on his finds, etc. etc. and we then pushed on. Ted didn't say much at the time – he was in fact, rather a "quiet" kind of guy in company. But in days and years to come he often referred to this incident as illustrative of what he felt (and in which I much concurred) to be a sort of problem – and that is "Why can't so-called professionals ever seem to find artifacts or sites themselves?" LOL! To which I added, as years went by, a yet-further wonderment: Why can't professionals ever learn to write and publish, in timely fashion, regular, coherent reports on their work?"

And because of this – the "pros" often resented collectors (such as Ted and others) and refused to associate with them, etc.

Anyhow, Ted was outstanding this way: that guy had absolute micro-eyes: he could walk over plowed fields or along woodland paths and he would just be forever bending down and retrieving something – over and over! He was uncanny! He was to become one of my most trusted and efficient sidekicks.

But the "Columbia crowd" (and maybe even some "Yalies" – since something once nosed around the ACS grapevine, was that Rouse, with his fixation on the Caribbean), just "used" CT sites and rock shelters to rough-train his Yale anthropology undergrads over many, many years - to the ultimate detriment of proper recording and publishing.... I came to believe these incipient "professionals" preferred to rather "hear" first of some find somewhere and then try to wrest "permission" to work on it away from any illegitimate discoverers (by their lights!) by throwing their "anthropology" weight around with landowners and others. An insight that occurred long ago to me is that professional archaeologists, by contrast to avocational archaeologists (if you will permit), often bitterly "resent" the latter – who appear to them to be doing for a hobby that which they (the pros) must do for a career and a veritable "living," as it were. When an avocational student then has the temerity to "publish" in the sacred literature of the field – not once, but (Mon Dieu!) several times, and those efforts including top journals in the field as well as (mere) state journals, etc. – then something is not right with the world, no matter what Candide said!

Put yet another way, it has seemed to me at times in the past, that "professionals" often regarded their "diplomas" more like "hunting licenses," to flount and bamboozle land owners, homeowners, construction site operators (and others) with their "expertise" etc. – rather than just for what they were: university attestations to their having completed certain courses. In this manner, they sought to gain access to sites they could not otherwise find. Their archetype in this sense, being Frank Morgan, the blustering professor in the movie version of The Wizard of Oz...

Indian Mortar Stones: I don't believe it is still there – but for many years a large boulder with a shallow mortar in it stood in front of the Stamford Town Hall. Somehow I think this "disappeared" back when Stamford underwent a great downtown face-lifting in the 50's or 60's maybe... As I best recall, this mortar came from somewhere west up the other side of the Rippowam, maybe in the vicinity of Knobloch Lane – but of this I am not too certain. Nevertheless I surveyed through and around that area and adjacent Hycliff early-on, and can report there was at least one very small dished-out mortar atop a very large glacial erratic (size of small house) that once lay just off Stillwater Road. But this mortar may have been a glacial phenomenon in the end, for it was right on the edge of the erratic with quite a drop immediately beside it. (This same thing led me long ago to suspect the actual validity of at least one of the celebrated "Indian mortars" at Samp Mortar Rock – noted above – for it too, was right on the edge of a virtual cliff-size drop-off and thus seems most illogical and dangerous as a work spot for the Indians...). Further, both regions are full of surficial glacial phenomena; there being, in the case of the Knobloch Lane area, a very prominent and well-known glacial pothole right on the west side of Stillwater road near here. It is maybe 3 feet in diameter and vertically split, apparently back in glacial times, so that it presents a sort of niche or "pulpit" (or once did anyhow) one could easily stand up in. At one time, the Garden Club or some organization had affixed to the interior back wall, a brass plaque explaining what it was.

Finds near Derby: With time, my surveys roamed farther and farther afield. Once, in the woods near Derby (New Haven County), I investigated a Colonial cellar hole reported by a hunter-friend of mine. His was the site of the unusual kaolin pipe bowl reported therein, and also the find spot of a most interesting incised tabular piece of micaceous schist. Said stone was found lying face down in a dirt path terminating at the cellar hole. The incision bears a set of English-letter initials ("C.Mc" (perhaps), and "L.W". (?), and a clearly read date of "May 31, '08" and the further incised design of a rifle, complete in profile, and an arrow with arrowhead on the end, in line with, and out in front of the rifle... It has been surmised the stone 1) relates to the period of the cellar hole; and 2) it records some kind of dated event – and the "08" would seem to perforce indicate perhaps as early as "1708" or no later than "1808" due to the presence of the rifle and the arrow – which have been interpreted to possibly "record" some kind of "event" between settler(s) and Indians at or near this spot...

I subsequently framed this relic in a nice retaining wood frame and prepared it (it is quite heavy, obviously) so that it might be hung for viewing, and presented it on my departure from Connecticut, to the Derby Historical Society with full particulars, etc. Several subsequent requests in retirement here, for even an acknowledgement of donated same (plus a photograph for my files, as I had inadvertently never had one) went ignored, but in due course a Robt. Novak, Director of this organization, did eventually respond with terse one line note only, and submission of a miniscule, none-too-sharp photo of this object (which see). The recipient's indifference to my donation is not surprising at all – very typical of my general experiences back when I was doing my research in Connecticut. I shall be noting similar instances further along... (As is said: "At last it can be told!"). LOL!....

Branford Rock Shelter: I believe the only notes and drawings made on this find spot (if any) may be located in the files of the onetime "Newsletter" of NEAR (North East Archaeological Researchers) – an archaeological research group I once organized and now long defunct. As said files are yet in my keeping, and in storage up North, I thus have no material at hand here at all and this note will then perforce be rather short on archaeology – but perhaps entertaining for the associated anecdotal material nonetheless...

The site came into clear view upon the completion of I-95. It was (is) a classic rock shelter, literally just off the eastbound lanes, on the south side quite near "the" or one of "the" exits for Branford. It was clearly visible behind the roadside brush that summer and I had passed it by several times and wondered what if anything might be going on here. I got in touch with Frank Glynn, who knew the site right off. "Oh! That is the Old Gypsy Woman's Cave," he said. Or shelter perhaps. "Everyone knows it. But if I were you I would stay away from it!" It turned out that he and others had stopped by it once or twice (It was apparently well-known even long before – and there was a vague legend about an old woman, maybe even a legendary "Indian Squaw" (and no apologies offered to any racist watchdogs here – so there, too!) who had lived here perhaps even into early historic times. All very mysterious.

But Glynn's caution was prompted more by fact that when he (and others) had stopped by here to check, they had been approached by (several) "Mafia type guys" from New York or New Jersey, in a big black car – and these said Mafioso had "warned" them to "get lost" and leave the shelter alone. He was under the impression that these interlopers had dug or had been digging here, and there were rumors they had "found things" and spirited same all back to Bensonhurst or wherever... LOL! Perhaps the site marks the first venture of Organized Crime into Prehistory - who knows? If so, they have my sympathies for just about the only thing missing from "early" archaeology days in Connecticut would be a link to the Mob, and such would not surprise me at all! (Grin!)

Well, I decided upon Glynn's advice that the site was likely much disturbed, and my time could be spent better elsewhere. But once long after, I received an invitation to speak to the Massachusetts Archaeological Society at a dinner or some gathering up in the Bay State (I was a member of same) – and as I recall the "subject" was a very interesting human skull that had come into my possession via some teenage vandals who had dug some "Indian graves" in North Stamford (more later: see, if you like, the Riverbank Site . Some members of the MAS had "seen" evidence of "scalping marks" on this skull – and various positions had been taken by all factions, and were being hotly contested. I had been asked to please come and bring the skull as Exhibit A, as it were.

Accordingly, I asked an old friend and sometime excavating associate – one "Mac" McCormick – then of Stamford, if he would like to ride up with me. He said, "Great!" Now "Mac" himself was a bona fide character in his own right: he then being a genuine card-carrying CIA spook, charged with turning out "Reds" and other miscreants wherever he found them (this was all back in the McCarthy Era...). So Mac and I attended the dinner and I gave my little spiel and everyone had a grand time. Then Mac and I hopped in our station wagon and started the long drive back home.

The hour grew late. Very late. I was entertaining Mac with tales of the "Old Gypsy Woman's Cave" – noting we must actually be somewhere in the vicinity of it even at this time... Then I had an inspiration! Since the next day was Sunday, and no one had anything planned, and I always had my dig tools and field books in the wagon – why shouldn't we just find the cave – pull off the highway – stretch out in back of the wagon and catch a few winks – and then come sunup, we could make a firsthand examination of this place and maybe even run a few exploratory trenches through the shelter and see what was what...

Well, he did, and I did – and the shelter soon appeared off to our left side (returning from Massachusetts, you see) and we just pulled off and down the bank and parked right in front of it – and were soon blissfully stretched out snoring in the back. (I must add that to make room, we had shoved stuff around inside the wagon – and the aforementioned skull was placed temporarily on the passenger's seat up front...). We had been asleep but a short time when there came a sharp rap-rap-rapping on the car window! We both sat up – I remember the windows were slightly steamed from our breath – but clearly visible peering into our quarters was a State Trooper, grey Stetson and all, and he was flashing a light around inside the car and asking who we were, and what we were doing there.

I vaguely wondered if he had seen the skull sitting in the front seat – for it seemed to me that THAT would surely take some explaining at this hour and in this place. I said to Mac – "Jeezul! What we going to tell this guy?" Not perturbed one bit, Mac rolled over, took his wallet out of his pocket, opened it, and slapped it against the window right in the trooper's face. What that worthy then saw was Mac's official CIA operative's card right before his very eyes! LOL! Man! That did it! The guy sort of stepped back a few steps – straightened up – and touched the Stetson rather deferentially to us both, wished us a "Good Evening!", turned and departed at once in his patrol car. "Wild Bill" Donovan couldn't have pulled it off better. (For those for whom the reference may be a bit obscure: Wild Bill was the founder of the wartime OSS – Office of Strategic Services – in which Mac and his bro-in-law, Don (another friend of mine) had both served during wartime. The OSS then later segued into the CIA and that is how Mac, and Don, had just "come along" with the whole thing.

Suffice to say, we did in fact trench the shelter the next morning (Robt. Duval who "...loved the smell of napalm in the morning" (and not 'Devol" as an earlier draft here had it, and for which correction I am indebted to Jack Cresson – preeminent early lithics technologist, and NJ archaeologist, who kindly favored me with a read-through of same) - but your diehard shovelbum, you see, has another "Apocalypse" – for him it is always the smell of damp, new-turned earth in a rock shelter before breakfast, coffee, or anything else). Ahh! Those were the days – now all long fled down the corridors of time. (Well, if Rouse was not to be allowed flights of fancy, then neither should I – but you can edit the last offending line out yourself!). I believe we did find some medicine bottle fragments perhaps, a kaolin stem fragment, too, perhaps – and I seem to recall we "sounded" to sterility and perhaps the mysterious early level that Doug Byers once felt underlay so many Connecticut rock shelters... Our finds were minimal, however. The inventory would be in the NEAR materials (more anon) and any associated notes as well, all yet in storage. Memory at this time can serve no further.

There was one last "excitement" before we wrapped it up and departed later in the day. We ran a couple short walking surveys out from the shelter – southward - just to check the lay of the land –and it was while I was traipsing along merrily through the woods here, that the biggest blacksnake I ever saw – he must have been in excess of 6 feet easy and very big around – suddenly sprang straight up in front of me where he had been coiled unseen in the grass at my feet! These snakes are known to do this: literally "stand straight up" right in front of you – and it like to scare the bee-jayzus out of you when it happens!

Thus, the "Old Gypsy Woman's Cave" whatever, or Branford Rockshelter... as it appears in my notes thereon.

Charles Woundy Collection: Over a period of many years, I was an on-again-off-again volunteer and staff member of the old Stamford Museum and Nature Center. This organization at one time had in its keeping a quite large collection of American Indian materials. I never knew the whole story, but much of the collection was in former times prominently displayed by the Museum. It was called the "Charles Woundy Collection" and had apparently been donated to or left to the museum by Woundy – who once ran as near as I can recall, an auto parts store in nearby Glenbrook. What the particulars were or how he came to amass this collection, I just don't know. And I am not even sure if it contained local materials (but I think it did). It did contain however, some (nice) Southwestern U.S. pottery, and some Hopewell materials and stuff from other areas. I remember specifically a large collection of beads "...from the Spiro mound." – the Oklahoma mound that was infamously dynamited by pothunters way back in Depression Years or thereabouts... The problem was that no one at the Museum in those days was really interested in "Indian stuff" and so the collection was just sort of ignored, moved around, stored (some of it) in the attic, etc. I do know that once, however, I did voluntarily rough-catalogue the better part of it and typed up a rather voluminous booklet of same and left it with the late Ernie Luhde, curator (who at a later date could not find it...). I mention this all in passing, since it is just conceivable that researchers some day may want to know something about this assemblage, and I can at least remember this much.

Fred Dockstader, B.2, and The Heye Foundation: At one time, in the dim, dark days before NAGPRA, en bloc removals of human burials from sites under archaeological investigation, was an entirely legitimate field technique. Indeed, only the virtuoso excavator was usually able to bring this off – as exposing, stabilizing, removing and transporting fragile remains for later lab examination, or as was at one time much desired: museum and exhibit displays, definitely exceeds the skill of many diggers. We reclaimed such an inhumation at the Sasqua Hill Site "On the Recovery of Burial Number Two at the Sasqua Hill Site, East Norwalk, Connecticut". If any similar burials were ever reclaimed – and published – in Connecticut, I know it not.

Subsequently, I donated our restored find to the then Heye Foundation of the American Indian, which at that time was located down in the Bronx (it has since been "absorbed" by the Smithsonian, and relocated way downtown at Bowling Green, as The George Gustav Heye Center). The Museum's director at that time was Fred Dockstader, one of the most interesting guys I ever met – and despite the misfortunes which later befell* him, I am in his camp yet. He wanted to put our en bloc on (permanent) display in his Hall of New England Archaeology – which was just fine by us. And he did so (not without a minor quibble raised by me later with an unwarranted "liberty" one of his exhibit preparators took with one aspect of the en bloc – but this was of no moment). The exhibit was installed and opened to public view.

Perhaps I should first, however, record some of the "events" surrounding its transport down from Connecticut, since they perpetuate the often Kafkaesque flavor of Connecticut archeology in this "less kind, less gentler" era...

It was arranged that I would deliver the burial on a certain Saturday afternoon at a side door to the Museum, at which time Fred and a couple of "hands" would help take over and get it carried up and into the building. At the time I either did not have a Station Wagon or else it was laid up – I don't recall. But I needed one to accommodate the bulky (and quite heavy) boxed exhibit. A neighbor, hearing of my plight, voluntarily came to the rescue. In fact, he took over the rescue! He became so excited and so enthused about the whole thing – and I couldn't figure out why. He had a large, beautiful Buick Wagon – one of the biggest. And he took it to the service station the day before, and had a super Simonize job done to it. Then he scrubbed the interior and steam-cleaned the upholstery and swept and vacuumed it all out, etc. etc. Finally, I said, "Whoa, Here!" What are you all about? This is only a big box of bones and dirt which I have to run down to the City and then I will be right back."

He looked at me in amazement. "Why!," he said. "This is an ...Indian! (pause) From the ancient times – when Jesus preached to them..." Etc. etc.

(Oh, My Gosh – then it dawned on me – my neighbor was a Mormon – Church of Latter Day Saints guy – he actually had moved back East from Utah some time before. And it is part of their "belief" system that Christ preached to the New World Indians way back when, etc....).

I hastily composed myself and threw myself more fully into the "proceedings" – LOL – anything to get this show on the road.

Which we eventually did, of course.

Our next concern was to obey all traffic laws, not speed, and draw no attention to ourselves. The reason for this being (I think Dockstader maybe tipped me off beforehand) that once not long before, a prominent amateur archaeologist of his acquaintance, - well-known guy actually – he was a dentist I think, and his name was something like "Rochmanieroff" something like that - did a lot of surveying and apparently excavating down in the City itself, and once it seems he had been stopped by the Police when he was transporting some bones they had just recovered and before it was all over he either had got arrested or been fined for...."transporting a body without an undertaker's license". (Mon Dieu!) So we were most circumspect in our trip down to the Bronx and obeyed every traffic law! LOL

Well as I say, the exhibit was eventually put on display and all was going well, when one day I got a panic call from Fred and he said, "Bernie! You got to come quick and get 'your' (I had donated it to him!) burial out of here: we have been threatened with a bombing by...Indians!"

Good Grief! So I hied me back to the Heye where Fred, in much disgust, filled me in on some details: it seems some "Indians" (as he noted, this particular "tribe" was about 90% black) from the 'Shinnecock Reservation' somewhere out on Long Island, had seen the burial and raised a stink about its being a "degradation" to their ancestors, etc. etc. and if it was not removed, they would bomb the gallery! (Such lunatic protestations are become a commonplace I guess in these parlous times, but at that time, such high jinks and threats were all but unknown).

So I recovered B.2 and brought it back home, where it graced various family rooms, dens, office suites and the like throughout my next several decades of life and raising a family and different houses and so on. It was housed in a fine plate-glass case and quite presentable and interesting withal, in fact. "Jeremiah," as the kids all knew it, became in time, a family fixture as they grew up and the years passed by. Along the way, I succeeded in "drawing" a very nice 1:1 "production mold" in plaster from the burial – and additionally "back casting" at least one repro from it (in plaster) – which, when colored and painted, was a very high fidelity duplicate of the item and would make a very handsome exhibit piece for students, museums, etc. – without the onus of any actual, factual "original" bones or parts or pieces of the skeleton itself present at all! One hundred percent plaster (I plan to experiment in perhaps casting plastic or even vacuum forming (which would totally eliminate the excess weight even of plaster) when I get a chance some day (I have some experience in modeling and casting work...) and maybe make duplicates of the item readily available to all. (Unless NAGPRA and its fringe adherents find that vinyl sheet or plaster-of-Paris skeletons are somehow lineal descendants and part of the "patrimony" of any Native Americans passing through...).

Thus, B.2. The original is no more (its ultimate disposition being easily the most bizarre aspect of this whole hegira – known only to one or two trusted intimates...Sigh). But the faithful copy exists yet, and holds the potential then for B.2 to rise, perhaps phoenix-like some day, under saner circumstances and more informed outlooks...

* Not strictly part of this record – but interesting withal: Fred was a highly intelligent and very personable guy. His father was a German, or "German descent" as we say I guess, as I recall anyway, and his mother had been a Navaho. He thus stood with a foot in both "racial" camps, and was a bulwark against extreme stances either way. But he was colorful and charged with maintaining many expensive and "sacred" – at least historically if not otherworldly – objects and things, and apparently the record shows he began to use some bad judgment – including trafficking with dubious collectors and antiquarians (more later) and (most sensational) once giving away Geronimo's war shirt to Johnny Carson during a TV appearance! These various derelictions came ultimately to the attention of no less a public watchdog than Jacob Javits, NY State Prosecutor and general headline grabber of those times. Eventually, Fred was dethroned (Alan Mounier reminds me that Fred died in 1998), and the very Heye itself merged ultimately with the Smithsonian Institution.

Julius Lopez: Those of us working in Fairfield County in those days – the southwestern corner of CT – naturally found that our interests were better served by the more active research going on west of us – including Metropolitan NYC. Many new and interesting finds, properly exposed and recorded, were being reported from lower Long Island, Staten Island, and on down as far as Sandy Hook and the Jersey capes. Prominent among the workers there was Lopez, a self-made researcher and scholar of the highest order. His later untimely death was a true loss to archaeological endeavor in the tri-state area and mouth-of-the-Hudson generally. His early reading of my draft for the Indian Field site (at his home in Queens one night, by invitation) was an eye-opener and very helpful. I am happy to extend him this posthumous recognition.

Devil's Den, Weston: One of the largest tracts of undisturbed land in SW Connecticut is the Devil's Den Preserve at Weston. We surveyed through here extensively, but no unquestionably undisturbed sites were ever located – though we did find several disturbed shelters. (One of which was quite unusual, as an immense rock fall had detached itself in antiquity and fallen upon the shelter part proper all but burying it under a house-size rock! Nonetheless, pothunters had "found" this site and tunneled in under the rock fall with ragged holes and undercuts – removing a number of artifacts (later seen at the house of one of them). A leading disturber of these sites was a Minister at a local church – if I were to try and summon his name from memory it would be something like "Keener" or Kimer or something similar. He used a motorbike to scoot around over some of the woodland trails and somehow was always one jump ahead of us. Of any materials he collected, I have no idea as to their whereabouts, nor am I aware of any published references by him – but there may have been notes from time to time in local papers – and perhaps even his Church Newsletter, etc. – but I am just speculating as to the latter.

A retired mining engineer lived on the perimeter of the Preserve and "knew more about" who and what was doing the digging here... but he proved only marginally helpful. Through him, however, I met a young man who did work with me quite closely for awhile, and came to see and appreciate the harm pothunters were doing (I believe he may have been dating the mining engineer's daughter...). Craig Tompkinson or Tomkins was his name, and a much overdue note-of-thanks this shall be: Craig surveyed relentlessly and untiringly weekend after weekend with me in this vast tract – riven with bogs, clifflets, drop-offs, fallen trees and "hollows" in a most difficult way (The very name perpetuates the fact that this whole area was avoided by early farmers as unworkable and useless – plus the delightful tale of the Devil's Footprint in a boulder here, and that he in fact used to appear at night to the long ago colliers who once made charcoal here, and play his fiddle for their entertainment...). Craig proved to have quite some artistic skill and I introduced him to the pen-and-ink method for recording artifacts destined to be described in future publications. He undertook to prepare a great many excellent such drawings on materials from a number of local sites – and these illustrations, never published, must still be with the NEAR or other files, and most likely accompanied with provenience details, too. Craig eventually dropped out of the scene and I have no idea what became of him – but he deserves acknowledgment here.

Robert ("Bob") Harper: Another name that comes up during recall of surveys in and around the Devil's Den and the Saugatuck Reservoir, generally, is this guy. I had few, if any, direct contacts with him, but he was known to hosts of collectors and others who frequented these haunts. He was if I recall rightly, the Legal Caretaker and Policeman for the Reservoir (which was owned by the Bridgeport Hydraulic Company). And he was an unparalleled "pothunter" and site despoiler in his own right! And his legal capacity was used to deter fellow pothunters from entering upon any of this vast grounds at all! He thereby secured a sort of "exclusive" to plunder uninhibited, the treasures he was hired to protect! (Talk about a case of "the rat guarding the cheese!" Sheesh!). He lived in a small house that at that time was near the western edge I guess it would be, of the very dam for the Reservoir itself. This was a wild and scenic road which skirted the Reservoir and then wound off down the valley below.

Several Society members (ASC), collectors and others over the years told me of the vast collection of artifacts and other materials "Bob" had plundered from rock shelters and other sites here (the Reservoir itself contained remains of a 19th Century village, and at times, droughts would expose parts of this place and stone walls and building foundations would be clearly visible). China, bottles and metal artifacts thus also complemented Harper's extensive site looting. His brother or father or someone, at one time operated a gas station in the village of Weston proper, and occasionally he would be seen around there. But mostly he "patrolled" the backroads and woods – ironically, the very nemesis of his fellow relic seekers...

I would have no idea at this remove of where (or really what – since most of what I know about his collection is hearsay) his "finds" would be at this time, or even if there were any provenience data attached thereto, but future researchers might wish to know of all this and so I relate it here.

NEAR (North East Archaeological Researchers): After a popular lecture I gave one evening at the Stamford Museum and Nature Center off High Ridge Road, a number of people stayed on in conversation and wondered if there were not some way they, too, could partake of an organized search for Indian sites, and "help out" in the pursuit of local archaeology. From this modest beginning was born "NEAR," destined during its several years of existence, to much extend reclamation of some important historic and prehistoric sites in the region. I was its First Director (in which capacity I made a rule that no one was to serve in perpetuity as a Director, but that just as soon as enough skills had been forthcoming in the group – that a new Director was then to be named – and that thereafter said Directors were to serve only for a year or some set period to be determined, and to be replaced by regular popular vote). "No good idea should go unpunished," as the old saying has it – and the group ultimately foundered on just this very inability to name another Director... But of this more anon.

In no time at all, word of mouth had swelled our ranks to some 60 or more "regular diggers" and attendees, and group enthusiasm was one of the highest I have ever known for so spontaneous an organization. We met regularly at the Museum and later it seems perhaps up at the Bridgeport Museum, as well, and maybe a school or two – I just can't quite recall. Early-on, we had "lucked out" in that one of the new members had some sort of "in" with the Stamford School Board – then charged with demolishing the old Stevens School, which stood at the junction of US 1 and "Clark's Hill" I think it was called, on the west side of town. And this member was able to secure for us exclusive permission to "loot" this building of any valued furniture or other items left therein, as none of this material was to be salvaged and all was going under the "knocker's hammer" when demolition began, and once reduced to rubble would be carted away as landfill, etc.

We turned out with carryalls, trailers, pickups and lots of willing hands and in one day of "salvaging " on the job came away with many desks, chairs, blackboards, glass-fronted oak book cases, fire extinguishers, and miscellaneous gear and paraphernalia too diverse to recall – with result that by nightfall we had completely outfitted our quarters in the Museum basement as a bona fide organization Meeting Room and sometime Archaeo Lab – all without spending a single cent!

Having a good home like this really put us in the running – and almost overnight! Our good fortunes continued: by now we were starting work in the field – the Colonial homestead known better as Lambert House or (sometimes ) Lilacstead on Rte. 7 in the town of Wilton being our first such project. See Lambert House. This "indoors," largely wintertime "dig," was followed in turn by the first large-scale excavations at Spruce Swamp (over several seasons). These much extended my original investigations here somewhat earlier. ( See: Spruce Swamp. Regrettably (as came to be a flaw in NEAR's setup) these later excavations have never been published – I was never able to get any of "my people" up to the requisite writing stage – but they (variously) mastered photography, mapping, surveying, recording in the field, even preparation of artifact drawings for reproduction and these materials are still extant in stored files of this organization, which later became or were largely merged with mine.... and hopefully can be turned over intact to Nick eventually. One interesting offshoot of all our work (and my surmise) that Spruce Swamp recorded clear evidence of a Post-Pleistocene sea level rise, was the fact that the well-known glacial geologist and geomorphologist, Arthur Bloom from Cornell, came down once and we spent a delightful day together, hip-deep in the Spruce Swamp bog, taking cores with his equipment to verify and extend his work in Holocene sea level variations along this shore...

The years have erased most of their names now, but ours was a large and congenial group. Earl Claypool, then of Stamford, was a diligent and devoted worker, and indeed became Number Two guy, Field Director and General Factotum in the group. Another was Art Henke, a "handy guy on a picnic" as the saying has it, and a consummate photographer into the bargain – who stopped at nothing – even building removable scaffolds of tree trunks and other materials obtained right on site to obtain coveted overhead and "aerial" shots of our units. There were many others, too. My wife, Jean Powell, ran "Alice's Kitchen" as it came to be called: our Field Kitchen which could feed several dozen diggers at the end of a hard day's labor. (By now we had graduated to all-night camp-outs at our digs – notably the Eckart Site north of us) and our communal gear had grown to include our field tools, shovels, sifters, etc. plus tents and other camping gear). I remember many nights around the huge campfire in the deep woods, when "Amy" Somebody, and others, brought their guitars and the group would sing and laugh for hours beneath the moon! Outside the now scattered remnants of this once active organization, I doubt that anyone involved in CT archaeology has ever heard or has had any real inkling of the salad days of NEAR.

Its demise was unanticipated and still not wholly clear to me. What happened is that I had told the group I would not serve as Director indefinitely, and true to "our" democratic principles in this land, they MUST ultimately select one of their number to succeed me. But this they never did. I did, in fact, and as I had promised them I would, "step down" – thinking thereby to "force" them to move on and let "new blood" take the helm for a bit. But all that happened really was the fragmenting of the group along personal and factional lines and it just melted away like the Cheshire cat. It was a shame, in its way – we had some good people aboard. None were archaeologists at signing-on: several were by the end. (Among whom I might list no less than Sue Terpening , who went on to a career as a prominent painter of Indians and (incidentally only in passing) contemporary (in a way) of even more illustrious Paul Calle, unsurpassed in his genre of painting the historic Mountainman era, and for whom I was to be, much later on, his chief model. See Mountainmen. I taught a few here how to "do" archaeology – literature research, site surveying, laying out sites, excavation and records-keeping, work with the alidade, and the oft-neglected curating, preserving and ultimately describing (and illustrating) artifacts and finds for publication. And these few in turn taught yet others. But there was just one aspect none of them ever seemed to master: that was the writing end of it. Your non-writer (i.e., non verbal) you see, is just "frozen" when it comes to putting thoughts on paper and that is what happened here. We had finds and data by the bucketful, but no one seemed to be able to take the ball and run – though I lent them every assistance so they too, could "get things published." It remains somewhat a puzzle and a disappointment to me to this day. Two possible exceptions were Ted Jostrand, who did finally write a paper of his own (on the Eckert Site), and I believe this was accepted by the ASC Bulletin. But by then, Ted had "moved along" and he was never a mainstream member of NEAR anyhow. And the second being her "thesis" for her degree, written by the aforementioned Sue Terpening, which she kindly asked me to read before she submitted same.

About this time, the American Indian Institute (I believe it has had several name changes over the years?) got organized up at Washington in Litchfield County. The driving force here – at least originally – was a Headmaster at a Boys' School – Ned Somebody as best I recall – and he was moved to all this as he later said by finding of Indian artifacts once in a garden or somewhere and beginning to wonder at their presence... He was quite successful in the end, and I believe the current institution is well received up that way. He was however, some antagonistic in the beginning, as apparently jealous of NEAR's immediate successes, he called me once on the phone to "protest" that "we" were "taking members away from his organization and where did we come off with this attitude, etc. etc." and other such peeves. Nothing new in his "attitude," anyway, among those interested in archaeology in Connecticut way back when... right? LOL!

But this was followed in time by a personal invitation to be his "guest" at a dinner the AII was having up at Washington some time later. So my wife and I drove up – I remember the night well – it was bitter cold and moonlit. And I met this Ned (Swiggert – was it? Just came to mind...) and several of his "lieutenants" and associates. And I remember well what I pegged as a prime mover in his rapid expansion of his organization: He had had the counsel of some professional business and marketing heads (NOT archaeologists!) among his members, and they had set about this the best way: by organizing, financing, and getting a well-heeled sponsor! And I cannot remember all the particulars at this date, but it involved a personal approach to the then well-heeled CEO of no less than the J.C. Penny Company – resident somewhere out west (he was not in Connecticut). And Swiggert and his people had learned (somehow) of this guy's burning interest in "Indians," and had flown out to meet him – and during their conversation, they had "given" him a well-made projectile point from one of their "digs" and the guy could not thank them enough for this relic and was henceforth ..."their main man." Smart marketing!

In fact , this propensity for seeding interests, and sealing deals with actual artifacts, was also evident at the dinner, for as I recall, every setting at the table that night had a projectile point "table gift" (I politely declined mine), and there was a small barrel there of same as "extras" – and to my query, I was informed that these were "rejects" or less-than-perfect specimens from their general "finds," (!) and they used them this way as sort of what the Mafia, I guess, used to call "vigorish" to move contemplated deals right along....

Mostly however, his organization and NEAR's paths diverged and I never really got "close" to anyone up there or worked with them much. I do recall vaguely engaging in a protracted dispute (perhaps in the pages of the NEAR Newsletter?) about the absolute shambles this organization made of an apparently bona fide early man site somewhere up near New Milford. This may have been at or near the site known to generations of collectors as "Lover's Leap" – we foot-surveyed through here ourselves once or twice, and several NEAR members had more detailed knowledge of the disastrous pot-holing and botched reporting of genuine Clovis Points (?) originating from here (Ted Jostrand, whom we met earlier – knew a lot about this place and his notes wherever they might be – or if – might shed some light on affairs, I don't know). He died years ago, and I lost track of his widow, Mary, too... they had moved to a small town (Woodford? Something like that...) in Vermont.

There was one guy I had some correspondence with, too, for awhile (this may have been about the still-undescribed – but at least recorded! – "quartz quarry" finds NEAR had made near Sandy Hook (centered on the so-called Eckart Site). He was some kind of "chief researcher" for Swiggert, and his name was Roger Moeller, not Miller (as a colleague, Alan Mounier, esteemed New Jersey archaeologist and author, has currently reminded me, and he was very decent guy, pro, and congenial to work with too, though I never met him in person, best I recall. NEAR conducted some extensive investigations here over a couple of seasons (including building a "jeep road" in and out of the place) and there should be a substantial amount of field notes, field plats and drawings, and photo files pertaining to all this still extant. There is a definite undefined continuum of "quartz quarrying" from prehistoric times on into an ill-defined historic period of (Caucasian) "silex quarriers" at a number of related sites spread over several miles. I, myself, have written to this matter and believe some of the interim reports and periodic updates may have been in the NEAR Newsletter. Hopefully, should any future researchers be interested in following-on here, this material will be in the archives slated to go to Nick Bellantoni. There may have been earlier "reports" (in ASC journal?), perhaps by the "mythic" (to me anyhow) Jack Eckert, credited I guess by some, with finding and naming the basic site, and treating largely pre-ceramic artifact finds, but it was not until NEAR's later investigations, that the "quarry" aspect emerged as a prominent feature. Jostrand, I know, published here (finally!) and in the ASC journal – but this was after NEAR's dissolution I think (?) and I do not know that he treated the quarry phenomena at all (?).

One nebulous archaeological datum related to the general area here, is that of a reputed Colonial "gold mine" on a nearby hill. This hill we finally determined to be a wooded steep slope up from some nameless creek going (north?) or whatever way it was, out of Sandy Hook (it may even be locally called "Mine Hill" or something like that...). Here was some kind of small industrial works down alongside the creek near here: a fire hose manufacturer or something... But anyhow, I did find documentation in some old Connecticut histories for actual existence of this "mine," which was "pre-empted" by British soldiers for a while during the Revolution... but I really do not remember all the details. Actual recorded amounts of gold removed here have been listed somewhere, and the spot seems to be more than just legend. But we never found it though we surveyed for it over several days. Gold is not a likely native mineralogical "find" in Connecticut at all, but it is not inconceivable, either, that some auriferous pegmatite or other intrusion at depth here might have long ago intruded the local rocks. It does not appear that the "finds" were "float" or placer-type placements... but to tell the truth, the whole thing smacks (still) somewhat of the will-o-the-wisp, but if I were still on the scene I would invest enough time to run it to ground one way or another!

Wm. Duncan Strong: Most exemplarily, in his way, of the overbearing attitudes of "Columbia archaeological faculty and undergrads" – was this guy. He came on like gangbusters and might be said to "live up to his name... if nothing else." Item: back at the time I was working at my Mianus Gorge Rockshelter , I received a phone call one day out-of-the-blue and it was this esteemed Dr. Strong (now deceased some years, he is actually quite a Dean of American Archaeology, not to be denied (!) and indeed, a onetime boss in fact of the BAE, in which capacity he may well have been he who called out the rather "derelict" Donald Lehmer , Director of the ill-starred South Dakota Buffalo Pasture Site, noted at the outset here as my very long ago "entry" dig experience into this contentious field... This presents the rather ironic "call out" of my first dig "boss" by this dude – and my own subsequent "call out" by same two or more decades later and half-a continent away...! ). Strong had by then migrated East to his position with Columbia. As I have suggested elsewhere, many of the Columbia undergrads (indeed, ALL of them ever known personally to me!) were incapable of finding their own sites, and were hell-bent on interfering with anyone who could – and who then had the temerity to get permission and excavate same! After much huffing and puffing, Strong (whom I never met – before or since) mentioned the "....rock shelter you are vandalizing in the Mianus Gorge" and that by all that was holy he would have me "arrested" and hung, drawn, and quartered - and that no one on Earth but his "own" students and undergrads had any right at all to "investigate" these precious and sacred remains, etc. etc. Words to that effect, anyhow.

This immediately alerted me to the fact that I was being followed "'in the woods" or something like that by his scouts and they had thus come upon the Mianus Gorge shelter – which we were in fact, in that very instant, in point of shutting down (i.e. backfilling) as our work there was completed. I told Strong in effect I had legal permission from the landowner and that far as I was concerned he could go pound sand in a rat hole. A day or so later, on my last visit to the site, what do I behold around mid-morning, but a veritable contingent of Columbia undergrads, shovels over shoulders and lunch bags a-swing, marching in a platoon formation across the reservoir dam down below us (the shelter is somewhat higher than the dam and a short ways off). Soon this wide-eyed contingent debauched upon our site, and with never a word or "howdy-do", set to digging and spading up anew our recently emplaced backfill! (Mon Dieu!). Chattering like magpies, they lay out out new grids, etc. as though we were only so many disembodied spirits standing unseen to the side. One of Strong's henchmen was their "leader" – a guy named Bordaz (whom Alan again reminds me had an illustrious background in Old World studies, and his native France...).

As for me, I could care less. Bordaz made a few lame "excuses" on the spot for all the "confusion" – but "Professor Strong" had "arranged it all" and he was just carrying out orders. LOL! (Once again, as far as the Columbia crowd was concerned, I was just "history.") Landowners, understandably unknowing most of the time about prehistoric evidences on (or "in") their land, often extended permission "to all" to dig and enjoy themselves! (A usual condition, when finding out they were suddenly to be illuminated by "history's spotlight," was to extract the promise up forward that "any gold" we found was to be turned over to them, up front, and no questions asked – a condition which rarely proved unduly onerous...). They were often bamboozled by wannabe anthropologists yet in school, making grandiose claims "in the name of Science" about their unquestioned and exclusive rights to be excavators of all found sites, and not others who were to be largely considered as opportunists, even lowly "pothunters" who found and dug sites for commercial and personal gain, etc.

And.... true to form... I have never seen in print nor heard by word-of-mouth from that day to this, one single thing about these Columbia "investigations" (or post-investigations, as may be) at this shelter...

Harry L. Shapiro: then Chairman and Curator of Physical Anthropology, The American Museum of Natural History, New York was quite elated to receive from me a donated, complete skeleton from the Riverbank Site. He cited the infrequency with which remains of either 18th or 19th Century individuals are recovered for study.  One of his assistants – a J.R. Orttung – submitted a "table" of osteological data on this find – but never the Museum's accession number or other requested data. Things then really fell apart, when Shapiro – a worldclass physical anthropologist - "found" for three of the world's major races present in the (total) assemblage from here (which see said report). He then capped it all by "tipping off" the "Columbia Nightriders" to the site – and, as usual, they arrived post facto (but never when I was present), and dug here (at least as I have from hearsay) – recovering at least one burial (?).

And, following their usual pattern, and by contrast to my own efforts at this and other sites, never published a single thing here on their "work" or whatever it is they chose to call it...

Ernie Wiegand: Another name out of the past is this dude – now a "Professor" I believe, and at my last hearsay, a faculty member at a college in East Norwalk (?) In any event, I remember him – but again, not too kindly. He first showed up, digging for me (rather digging for NEAR, if you prefer) at the Lambert House dig the winter of 1973, where I remember he and I dug together one morning, excavating a cellar fireplace, and recovering a fine piece of Mocha ware (illustrated in said report) and of discussing his new found interests in archaeology and the past, generally. (Funny how the mind catches these snatches out of reality and the past, and plays them back to us years later...)

However, he vanished early-on, and it was with some interest I was to hear long later of his rise in the ranks to leader of some group which had made a "major" find of a relatively early site (exact details wanting) somewhere up along the Rippowam River north of Stamford – maybe out High Ridge or maybe Long Ridge Roads... In any event, I was (as you might imagine!) much interested in this, and tried repeatedly to contact him, either by phone or maybe in writing (this was a bit before computers and e-mail were in wide use) and anyhow, I never heard squat in return from him. And certain it is he never tried on his own to contact me! (Plato once observed that his student Aristotle, was rather like unto the calf "...which draining the old cow's udders dry, then kicks her in the teats.") Well, perhaps this is a bit too dramatic for the circumstances, but it was all just of a-piece with the near-animus and indifference (feigned or otherwise) that ruled (or at least once did) between those seeking fulltime careers in this field, and those who through circumstance, study it independently, buoyed by other factors...

I know for a fact, though he has never been gracious enough to acknowledge it, that the Maritime Museum of Norwalk passed on to him a professional quality Stratigraphic Column reclamation I made at the Sasqua Hill Site and originally donated to the Museum. I trust it has proved a handy teaching aid and display for him over all these past several years in his instructing (in turn, as it were!) his young and eager undergrads there... (The "feely-touchy" taboos of latter-day "sociology-think" in re the things and objects reclaimed by digging the past has sometimes led in the past, and certainly in the present, to a veritable dearth of reclaimed field evidences, actual stratigraphic columns (as here), en bloc burials, etc. etc.) As these, (imo), are invaluable displays and teaching aids, the failure to obtain them at the time of excavation is a great tragedy. I at least, trained-in-the-field under real field experts in the early 50's and thereabouts – when this type of "archaeology" (is there any other?) was au courant...).

Wilton Town Forest: A short note on this excavation appeared in a former issue of the NEAR Newsletter, but much more extensive field notes, grid plats, survey and excavation data exist in my stored files, and will be at hand some day. With photographic documentation, too. This was a fair-size rock shelter dug with the assistance of several NEAR members... including Ms Pam Adams, then of Wilton, to whom much belated thanks are due.. There were well-defined historic, Woodland, and Archaic levels present. Historic materials included cast musket balls, and a very interesting silver bit (whence our "two bits" etc.) "Piece of Eight," – bearing the mark of the Mexico City Mint, and a very early date.

Weir's Pond: This area, on the grounds of the estate of a onetime very famous American painter: J. Aulden Weir at Branchville, was checked by NEAR field parties, but I recall no specific finds... (Not archaeological, as such, but perhaps more "small world story" is fact that Weir was one of most noted painters of the "19th Century Industrial Scene" – and his "Gun Foundry" depiction of the famous West Point cannon foundry has been acclaimed the "...most important such painting of its genre" in that century. I have elsewhere been a recreation blacksmith and once copied this famous painting as a watercolor for my own collection, and you may see it, and others, at the site above).

Massachusetts...and the Vikings: From time to time, I investigated odd sites in the neighboring Bay State. I was a member of the MAS, and knew many of their leading lights: Maurice Robbins, a first-rate researcher and gentlemen for sure, and Bill Fowler – consummate pen-and-ink artist, opinionated editor (!), and a thoroughly irascible old devil into the bargain!

About this time, I came for a while under the spell of Frederick J. Pohl, octogenarian antiquarian (say that one fast, three times! LOL!), of Brooklyn, New York, who was then making quite a name for himself in the (sometimes!) "fringe" area of Viking visitations to North America, and Pre-Columbian voyages in general... For a while there I served as sort of a "deployable" set of arms and legs to check out various ideas Pohl came up with (in which ventures I was often accompanied by Bob Hurst, a sometime teacher and historian of sorts who had temporarily strayed from his home base down in Texas, to work and live for a while among Yankees in the North). Notable were our first investigations at Follins Pond on the Cape, the celebrated and greatly over-hyped "Leif Erickson's Horse Bone,", some other isolated Mid-Cape tumuli, and other "evidences," as Pohl viewed them. Others were reporting variously on the "ship's shoring" at Follins; re-interpretations of the ill-famed "Tower" at Newport, Rhode Island; the celebrated Westford (Massachusetts) Knight cenotaph or marker stone; and related wonders and portents. The ASC's own Frank Glynn and his Early Sites Foundation, it is to be recalled, were involved in the endless controversies at Mystery Hill Caves (Pattie's Caves) up in New Hampshire. Later, Barry Feld , and his "Oggam script" began to make the scene down Connecticut way... even as far as Fairfield County and Danbury.... Check out Phenix Glyphs, where after my work there was done, a Feld follower (the same Nick Somebody who co-directed the "living history" experiments with me at Pound Ridge Reservation, NY – to be mentioned later...) showed up and flatly declared the "glyphs" (to the wondering home owner) as definitely "Oggam Script" – no matter what Bernie Powell or anyone else said...

Many of these were just ill-conceived ventures (in retrospect) – including not a few of my own. New England has long been the home of eccentrics, and eccentric reports – indeed this had reached the level of a cottage industry back in the 50's and 60's... Another who played through here was Charles Boland, onetime card-carrying Communist Party member (among other social achievements), talented TV Director (Herb Shriner Show), and author of They All Discovered America – a Doubleday Book-of-The-Month-Club hit, which expanded to include PreColumbian Irish explorers (Brendan the Bold) and many others.

Charlie and I were good pals for a long while, but he was a sharpie in the end, and lifted some of my materials (photographs, especially) and used without my permission in his work, so we eventually parted ways, but not before our celebrated "Recreation of Leif Erickson's Last Days Voyage" and other escapades – some of which you will find detailed at Vikings and immediately adjacent websites...

Of more serious work in Massachusetts, I submit my studies of the Barnstable Marshes and Sandy Neck in evidence, etc.

Rudy Colmers, M.D.: Rudy was the Medical Examiner for Stamford, and he lived nearby another doctor, the late Jack Farrell, M.D., who just happened to be my wife's obstetrician (as well as an "unknown" student of mine, in my Power Squadron Meteorology Classes – for which humorous account, see (near bottom): meteorology. They were both much interested in my studies in archaeology, and indeed, Jack was an invaluable field assistant at the excavations at Riverbank , where he supervised very carefully the exhumation of the skeletons – with careful notation of each bone, etc. In his capacity as Medical Examiner, Rudy was frequently confronted with "unknown" human bones, which often came into him via accidental exposures on construction sites. (Not all did however: a bushel basket full of same out alongside High Ridge Road one time, triggered my sleuthing which finally resulted in "unfrocking" of the vandals who dug them, and where they had dug... (See again Riverbank above for details...). But Rudy and I soon had a "working arrangement" whereby whenever he suspected bones to be very old, associated with marine shells, or otherwise not "au courant" (I later introduced him to the additional clues of red ocher stains, shovel incisors, and other subtleties of culture and race), he would then call me to retrieve same from the P.D. Property Clerk and please give him a separate report on the side... I remember well the day some bones from a construction site, arrived via ambulance (construction bosses always called the ambulance if their workers uncovered human remains...sigh!) at my front door, and were carried thereto in a pillowcase – the only container the driver had handy at the time (!)

In any event, it is to Rudy I owe thanks for the first serious suggestion that the accidentally recovered (and fragmentary) cranium from Spruce Swamp might be trephined. This led, in turn and by degrees, to involvement of some of the top names in both the national medical community (M. Helpern, Medical Examiner of NYC), and the late T.Dale Stewart, doyen of Smithsonian physical anthropologists, among others). Everyone had a "go" at this find, during which I made a most interesting observation: the medical men (indeed, Helpern wanted to "keep" the specimen for his private collection!), to a man believed the anomaly was evidence of a healed trephination, while the anthropologists (Stewart in their fore) were convinced the condition was... medical! LOL ! The case was a textbook example of the "surety" that prevails when practitioners of one discipline, make judgments in another discipline (which latter is not their specialty!)

"Murphy": I never knew his first name, but Murph and his associates were the most rapacious set of pot hunting rascals I ever encountered. I first heard of these guys from Ted Jostrand (mentioned earlier), who in his own still-earlier "collector" days, and as a longtime resident of Norwalk, knew them well. He often told me of the "immense" amount of Indian material Murph had stashed in his home, as he had personally seen it on several occasions. The way it worked was this: Murph was a largely unschooled guy who drove a truck for the Norwalk Dept. of Works, or Roads or some such agency. As such, he was apparently mostly independent as to how – and where – he spent his days. He had one or two cronies who rode around regularly with him, and what they did was look for and rape sites! Public parks, forest lands, construction job sites, beaches and marshes along the Sound – all were grist for their mill! Nor did they confine themselves strictly to Norwalk city limits either – I first came on to them following a find they had made and dug up at a "...farm up in Wilton (or maybe it was Redding)" – I can't quite recall.

But Ted, who had seen this "find," related it to me, and passed along their urgent invitations, to "come down to Murphy's some night and please give us your opinion what this is." It was a most intriguing set of bones and everyone was puzzling over what it was.

So one night I repaired to Murphy's. I tell you it was a shock! LOL! The first thing I saw was an Egyptian "mummy" (or wrapped, desiccated corpse or whatever: I am not an Egyptologist but these things are "purchasable" and tradeable from time to time, I know that, among the Collector Fraternity...). The "mummy" sat at the top of the stairs up to his flat – and set the stage for the macabre scene that was to follow. Once inside, the walls were lined with cases and cases of projectile points and other framed items and there were stacks of rocks and hammer stones, and modern ethnographic stuff (like "dream catchers" and that kind of crap) and reproductions of stuff, and fakes, and genuine stuff, and from everywhere – other parts of the US – the world, Africa, wherever. Bows and arrows hung on the walls.

I'm sure those who have ever been in a real collector's lair know what I mean. There was no rhyme or reason to any of it – just acquisition for acquisition's sake...

And there was the enigmatic bone tangle laid out on a table before me – awaiting my inspection. What I remember is rather short, adult, "gracile" bones – female, apparently. I don't even remember if there was a cranium or not and the abdominal bones were all askew and some missing, and the legs – I don't really recall much at all. But Murph and Co. had somehow managed to get out the pelvic girdle more or less intact (but skewed and distorted) but no one needed to be an expert anthropologist to see the tiny fragile-boned "mensch" under and between the adult bones: this was a female who had died in childbirth! They had all come to the same conclusion, and I could only concur! I went into my usual spiel about this being "quite an important find (at least very interesting...)" and might we revisit the site with them and look around? That was out! They were coming and going surreptiously in some guy's orchard up that way and no way were they going to confront him or own up to what they had already done!

I put in a lame plea for "donation" then perhaps, of the bones to some local museum – or maybe even Dockstader down in New York, whatever. But no – to no avail! Somehow my agreement with them over what "it" was, seemed an imprimatur of sorts they much desired and I knew this find was now destined for other climes and other owners (maybe several!) in the clandestine collector network that is almost unknown (on a personal level, anyway) to most professional workers. Murph called for cigars all around (I remember he smoked Munimakers – a real cheap brand!) But this likely sounds a bit "catty" (LOL!), so I sat and smoked, and drank one or two of their beers with them that night. Whatever happened to this most interesting find of theirs they had there that night, I have no idea. Both sides "probed" the other for clues or tips to current site hunting successes, but as you can imagine, both sides were equally circumspect in the present company! It may have been that night, however, that I first heard (kind of shockingly!) of Dockstader's trafficking with such folks and how many collectors "openly" bought and traded with him for "surplus" and "not very valuable" stuff, etc. They may have named a further associate of theirs, who lived somewhere up in Westport on the Post Road as I recall, but perhaps not. I do know I met such a guy once long after and believe he had me down to his digs to see his "collection" and he was very open about how he traded this stuff out the back door and all with Dockstader in New York, etc. Where there was so much smoke, there must have been some fire...

If you work it right, sometimes these guys can provide invaluable leads to site locations. Simon pure students (like many of the Columbia crowd) of course, recoil in horror at the idea... but there is another angle to it: sometimes (just sometimes!) you can "turn" or "convert" one of these dudes into a "good guy." I have done it. But it is true it is "risky." Messing with collectors is like messing with flypaper: if you are not super careful, pretty soon it (they!) are "in your hair" and "sticking to your reputation!" Sheesh!

F.W. Warner: Exemplary of some professionals' attitudes to colleagues back in the Mid-Century "glory days" of Connecticut Archaeology, is that of F.W. Warner, who published an item on foods of the Connecticut Indians . Initially, he misquoted an earlier paper of mine, as to presence (or no) of oyster at one of my sites. Then went brazenly on to ignore any number of relevant additional sources to the issue at hand – all au courant at the time of his study – and pertinent to it. Finally, he never replied at all to a letter I wrote him, citing these deficiencies at the time. Thus, "professional" archaeology – and courtesies - in Connecticut, as it once was. Q.E.D.

Betsy Whitehead: Betsy, now deceased, was when I first met her, the Director General of the Archaeological Institute of America , and a most charming and gracious lady indeed, easily the "First Lady of American Archaeology." One day back in maybe the late 70's (?), she called me out of the blue, to say that she "knew of me" and my work in Connecticut, etc. and that she had a favor to ask: she was, in fact, to be hostess for no less than the (then) Iranian Government Head of Antiquities (!), (whose name escapes me), and that this worthy was currently the invited guest of the United States Government, and was over here (with official State Department approval) and was further to be her private houseguest for the next week or ten days. He had asked, it seems, if while here in the U.S., it would be possible for him to perhaps visit some "typical" archeological "digs," and meet some of the American archaeologists...

(Wowee! Lucky Bernie –he wins all the tosses!).

She therefore wondered if I would come down to her place in Greenwich – for coffee on Saturday morning next – to meet her (and her guest), and discuss just what we might do. I said I would be flattered and appeared at her door at the appointed hour and time. (Her door then being attached to one of the most imposing estates on the Long Island Sound shore at Greenwich. It was, in fact, but one point of land over from the Greenway Estate – which we have visited earlier.) I guess when you "do" archaeology in Greenwich, at least in those days, you were bound to rub elbows with the bluebloods. (Sigh... tough job but someone had to do it!).

The door was answered in turn by a uniformed French maid, and I was ushered into this majestic hallway down which I was led to the "Morning Room" to meet Betsy and her guest. I had a brief glimpse further along into a large aviary where birds were flying about loose and tropical plants grew in profusion. (Some folks just know how to live!). Betsy introduced herself and her guest and we all sat down. There was one other rather shadowy figure present, and Betsy invited him over to for introduction. It seemed he was a Secret Service spook of some kind – and he had been assigned to safeguard her Iranian guest at all hours during his visit, and so, he too, was to be included in whatever plans we made.

And soon, another guy walked through and Betsy quickly introduced him as her husband, Jack. (Jack Whitehead, at one time one of richest men in the U.S., owed it all to blood – rather a machine for analyzing same - which he developed). Among other things, he turned MIT upside down, gave it nine furnished labs alone, and I don't know how many halls and funds and whatever else...). See, for instance, Whitehead - and don't take my word for it. But this morning as he trotted through his own Sunroom, I noted that he had a carpenter's saw tucked under his arm. I just innocently asked why so – and he noted that he was on his way to the upper stories of his mansion, thence to crawl out unassisted on the Spanish tiled roof (which covered acres and acres) to fix some of the tiles which had come askew. Then he fixed me with his eye and added that this was mainly from the gulls thereabouts, which retrieved hard-shell clams in the nearby marshes and then dive-bombed his roof to crack their shells... It was running somewhere around $25-K a year to fix all these damn tiles anymore, and the roofers were slow to get at it, etc. etc. – so he was going to move things along himself. With that he disappeared.

(As F. Scott Fizgerald would have it, "The rich are very different from you and I!")

In time, I came to know him a little (my wife and I were occasionally thereafter sometimes asked down to dinner parties at the Whiteheads): they had two dining rooms and they each presided over one. I got assigned to Jack's, (couples were broken up you see, and assigned thereafter at random: this was, as you might intuit, a really very well-heeled and educated crowd and the guests and meals were a connoisseur's delight!). And this is how I found out he was 1), an NYU graduate (as was I) – which fact thereafter he used to needle me to leave our alma mater a handsome sum in my Will, but we two were definitely not in the same league this way! LOL! – and 2), that he had a large collection of blacksmith forge-blowers (!), a subject near and dear my own heart, and upon which I could wax "hot" (no pun intended!) whenever the time came....

Suffice to add that their mansion had once been the retreat of no less than President Grover Cleveland back in the 19th Century, who had repaired there with a terminal tumor, as I recall. I sometimes get my recall of their place mixed up with that of Vizcaya – the famous mansion down Miami way – which I often visited, too – and which dates from the same era, etc. but I believe Whiteheads also had a sort of private concrete dock right offshore, something like Vizcaya - with a small outlying island just beyond, upon which was a most appealing little cabin set back in a grove of trees – all clearly seen and a bit of a landmark for boats out upon the Sound. Once I asked as to its particulars, and Betsy informed me it was "...an actual Russian woodchopper's cabin" they had seen on their travels in Russia, and had liked, and had bought it on the spot, and had it disassembled and shipped back here and reconstructed. Those birch log sides that one could view gleaming between the trees were the original Russian birches...

Dang!

Anyhow – at the time most of my archaeological sites were either closed down, inactive, or very hard to reach. I can't really remember the itinerary we worked out that day, but I know we must have done a drive-by of their neighbors' place – The Greenways – and showed her visitor the Indian Field site. One or two rock shelters, perhaps (Bitter Rock Shelter at Norwalk, was easy to reach). We then drove over to Westchester County, where I had cleared with my colleague, Louis Brennan, to visit his Croton Point dig on the Hudson, and one or two other stops over his way. I'm sure it was all an eye-opener to the Iranian archeologist, for here were no "lone and level stretches of sand...," nor antique trunks of stone or giant half-buried carved heads and temple columns...LOL! But he professed much interest and I am sure he appreciated it all. The Secret Service guy was a good sport, too, and didn't ask too many dumb questions... all to the good, of course, because questions about archaeology at that time and in those places might have left one wondering who or what was dumb about what...(!). Late in the day, we pulled into some toney restaurant parking lot over in Westchester County and closed out with a delightful dinner: the self-made Connecticut archaeologist, the Director of our nation's most exalted archaeology organization, the State Head of the Iranian Antiquities Department... and a State Department spook to watch over all. It doesn't get any better than this... LOL! Leastways for bone diggers...

Betsy's interest did not really extend to regional prehistory or Indians but we often talked thereafter. She was basically a Sinonologist I guess, and had been one of the first outsiders to view the famed hill of buried horsemen found sometime back in China. She at that time was much concerned with "improving" appearance and thrust of Archaeology, her association's famed coffee table publication. When she found that I was a writer and editor of some years' standing, she promptly invited me to critique the magazine. Which I did (gratis), and rather on the "q.t." for her - for which she expressed many thanks – and several of which advices she implemented later. (Long after, I once had occasion to contact a then-editor of the pub and discuss "affairs" – including their unconscionable "losing" of a draft submission by me (in their Boston editorial office) on the fiasco dig at the infamous Miami Circle Site (Florida)... They never did "find" or produce same – and another (the State Archaeologist of Florida, of course) scored instead – his was a pastiche of error and supposition (i.e., he equated the prehistoric basins there with modern septic tank drainage phenomena!). But this Editor honcho I was dealing with professed no "real" knowledge of "Mrs.Whitehead" or couldn't remember her, etc. and their editorial policies were inviolable and long-standing, etc. etc. and other BS. Anthropologists are not the only boors and ingrates in the world: the editorial world has a few of its own.

Primitive Lifestyles: The years rolled on and it came to pass that a number of NEAR members, on a field trip to an archaeological workshop we all attended down in West Virginia, saw a demo by one Errett Callahan, acknowledged "primitive lifestyles" expert and acclaimed "primitive style lithic knapper", and he also talked about his famous "Old Rag" adventures with his students in a remote Virginia forest preserve. A number of us were much taken with his presentation and his knowledge, etc. and soon talk was afoot of whether or no we might, ourselves, undertake some such "primitive living" field studies as an adjunct or "extension" perhaps to our strictly traditional archaeological methods for probing the past.

Thus was born the rather abortive foray into the "living past" which you will find more fully detailed in: Pound Ridge.

Missing altogether in that "account" is the harangue we received the first night of the "experiment", when in under the shelter overhang, the firelight flickering on the walls, a (self-styled?) 'Onondaga" Indian' (or Native Person, as is the vogue nowadays!) down from the "New York Reservation" for the weekend's activities – upon learning that one of our group had cut her hand while gathering roots "for the common cause" – said cut still bleeding - (hand held aloft and waved about for all to see ( blood running down, etc.) – all of which served to unhinge the "Onondaga Fire-Breather," who then launched into a diatribe against the perfidious whites who had stolen "her" country from "her" forefathers, etc. etc. and their heartless treatment of others – including one of their own (now currently bleeding to death before their very eyes!) – and how "her" People (aforesaid Onondagas) would have (in their salad days) "gathered cobwebs" and applied same to said sufferer's wounds, etc.etc. etc

Questions were invited – to which I (in back of cave) asked "So why don't you all go crawling about here amongst the black recesses behind us and "...gather cobwebs while ye may" – and apply same, etc. etc.? And then added as an afterthought: "Before our Sister here perishes in agony, I have a band-aid in the emergency stash, and if the "group vote" would so permit (before the anticipated expiration) we could apply it to the wound..."

Such indignation you never saw, already! We (my shelter mate – Bob Grathwhohl - whose much overdue acknowledgment is here acknowledged (at last!), including his "prowess" on another, future endeavor when I was not present, but in which he rallied a near-mutinous crew of fellow primitive re-enactors, by catching and killing with bare hands, several snakes, and then creating a fire (in the rain!) to cook them with, and having nothing but two flints (no steel!) to yield a very reduced output of sparks! He was one of my better "students" – or better: "followers," for sure) – were then held up to "group review" as examples of the "perfidious Caucasians" with their "deviant" ways, who had come long ago, unbidden, to these shores and made free with all they found (the fire needed more logs, but no one in all this populist movement (i.e., "that which is everyone's responsibility, is no one's responsibility...") had thought to gather same before sundown... so the shadows in the cave loomed larger and larger... Plato's shade, no stranger "it" to firelight and shadows in caves, I feel certain, must have watched this tableau – with grin upon its ectoplasmic features - from still further back in the gloom...

Among our various "deviant ways", we (Bob and I) were cited for swimming "with our underpants on" that afternoon when the group went for a (largely) skinny-dip swim after "subsistence-seeking" for wild berries (which I had shown them how to identify), etc. and upon which to survive yet another day. This was seen as "deviant behavior." My protestations that even the Indians may have wanted clean underwear and how better than to swim in one's dirty underwear, was met with derision and a thumbs down.

(Later that night, Bob and I, snug and dry in our carefully made lean-to – constructed before sundown – had to turn out due to commotion down the slope below us, where all the populist crowd, Newspeak, and Native Person-Persons were being openly rained upon in their open beds. Bob and I broke out the emergency tarps I had stored in the bush days before our experiment began, and spread them over the now dampish social enthusiasts huddled in their dampish beds, and who still refused to rise to the occasion. For our troubles, we were lucky if they did not snap and bite us like mad dogs, as we rigged the tarp over their heads...)

Well, I can't remember my co-director's name in all this hugger-mugger, but dog-in-the-manger style he turned out to be "one of them" in the end: it was "Nick" Something – and I remember (odd!) that his mother was a painter of some renown, and had distinguished herself by painting Franklin D. Roosevelt in his last days at Warm Springs, GA. So there, too! ("There is no accounting for personal taste," said the old lady as she kissed the cow).

Unfortunately, I rather believe the "primitive living" experiment(s) in the end contributed but little to the Connecticut group's "feel" for ancient ways and days – but this was largely because they turned the most of it into a living experiment in "social apologetics" about putative 'wrongs' of their collective forbears – and such nonsense. A few enjoyed the lithics and one or two began to show some skills at knapping... No one ever got a pot made or fired – save Bob G. and I – and we actually cooked in ours, too! I already had some grounding in edible wild foods – and did learn more about them from these investigations, as well, but the lot of these incipient archaeologists would have starved to death alone in the wilds...

Mountainmen: Inclusion of this section and the one immediately following, might be questioned on the basis of what relation do they bear specifically to "Connecticut Archaeology." A good point – and I hope I can supply a good answer. (If not – not to worry: none of this will be on the test, as it were, and any section here – or indeed!, the whole of this document – may be skipped with no lasting consequences! Bear it in mind...).

About this time (late 70's) as result of a causal visit by an old friend, then resident in California, I was introduced to "Buckskinning" as it is popularly called: the making and firing of flintlock and percussion guns – coupled more or less with "dressing the part" in period clothes and sharing making, trading, and swapping knives, tomahawks (reproductions all) and sort of tall tales and legends about the "Long Hunters" of America's past. This is a highly popular pastime in some areas of our country and draws thousands of participants an annual get-togethers, etc. There are innumerable websites devoted to the subject.

My friend's involvement, and the one he drew me into, was rather a bit different: it is known as simply "Mountainmen" – and is devoted much more specifically to an era (1820-1840) largely in the Transmontane West and the exploits of rather a few-in-number bunch of hardcases – whose names are legion, really: Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, "Liver Eatin' Johnson, and their fellows. Mountainmen purportedly adhere much closer to the lifestyle and accoutrements and behaviors (!) of their original models than do "Buckskinners" who affect more of a Hollywood type look and are not above using plastic in their many reproductions, and cutting other corners.

Thus my friend induced me to "join" this movement – which I did. He emphasized that my prior knowledge of outdoor living, etc. plus my invaluable studies into traditional blacksmithing would guarantee my success and interests here.

And this largely was so. New-come (as a "pilgrim") to these outings (called "Rendezvous" after the original such), I found many kindred spirits therein – if not quite the "scholarly" interests or deliberate recording I felt all this panoply presented opportunity for – for looking into or judging events of the past. I will make one observation here – and then we can move on: new-come from the Indian-level "primitive level" – it was like night and day to have (and be permitted!) use of flint and steel to make fire! No more fire drills or even fire plows when sundown loomed: fire steels took care of all that handsomely! My "experience" must thus have "captured" in a way just one minor item in what a leg up the arrival of "guns, germs, and steel" must have truly been on the American shores! This "hands on" type of thing is what is so sorely lacking in the background of so many wannabe "pro" archaeologists...

Suffice to add that as a consequence of these Mountainmen activities, I met and became, in turn, the chief model for Paul Calle, one of the top Western (genre) artists in US today. Paul's specialty has been this very subject of Mountainmen, and as he is a most accomplished "realism" painter, he was much drawn to my authentic (originals and repros) of period artifacts, guns, knives, etc. which appear as props in many of the photo sessions we staged. Click on this site to learn more about the Mountainman movement generally, and also to view some of Paul's work...

HMS Rose: A period-type black powder swivel gun I had modified and introduced into some of our Mountainman activities, ultimately drew attention of another friend, who felt that some of the folks then associated with the then-being-revamped 18th Century Six-Rate "HMS Rose" down at Black Rock Harbor near Bridgeport, might like to know of my interests (and vice versa). Though I had done a lot of sailing when young (fore and afters, of course), I had never sailed "ship rigged" and I became intrigued. I had known of Rose's rebuilding and all and efforts to work her into the many "Bicentennial" events then a-foot in the late 1970's. My friend introduced me aboard – and thus began a new variant of living and "experiencing" firsthand the lifestyles and daily problems of long ago. In short, I was named a gunner in the gun crew (we fired blank charges during mock sea battles out in Long Island Sound and elsewhere...) and since "Rose" was a British "rate", our "enemies" were Colonial sloops-of-war and other period reconstructions. It was like living in an 18th Century time warp – but unfortunately, the basic interest of my peers here was not "scholarly" at all – but much more given to "non-period" high jinks (i.e. fights with water hoses, etc.) and wearing of non-period clothing, drinking (!) LOL! – which rum guzzling of course, IS most appropriate for British navy life reproduction – but this was about the ONLY "behavioral authenticity" captain and crew allowed themselves! To this end, Rose represents (imo) one of the greatest possible losses to investigations of former life ways and re-enactment living. Still, like the Mountainmen activities described earlier, these forays into 18th Century sea life, are to some extent..."living archaeology" of sorts, and one takes from them whatever one is equipped to carry away... It might be of further interest to note in passing, that Rose was to become HMS Surprise in the Russell Crowe movie, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World – blockbuster hit drawn from one of the fantastic novels in a series by Patrick O'Brien about life in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Era...

Anne Roe (Simpson): By way of wrap-up to this wandering, admittedly discursive presentation, expose' (LOL!), or whatever it is, I would like to pass on to the reader a most interesting set of studies providing insight into the "why" and "how" various people (in our culture) take up the life ways and professions that they do. Anne Roe first came to my attention with a long-ago article she published in Scientific American. I have been unable to pinpoint this article by either date or title, but her general thesis runs through all her works and can be appreciated at The Psychology of Occupations, 1956, John Wiley & Sons. . Or again in her probably best-known work: The Making of a Scientist. 1953. Dodd Mead & Co.

Anne Roe was listed in her NYT obituary as a "clinical psychologist and educator." The rather terse obit failed to note that she is often acclaimed as one of the most important psychologists of the last century. She was incidentally the wife of George Gaylord Simpson (to whom the reader may recall, I once submitted the controversial horse bone from Follins Pond...).

Her specialty, in short, was trying to determine "what" caused various people to take up different occupations (life ways). A favored subject group of hers was "scientists."

What type of person takes up what kind (discipline) of which science, endlessly attracted her.

Among her early findings were that "hard" scientists (mathematicians, physicists, chemists, etc.) those who study Nature per se, tend – in general – to be somewhat (not always!) introverted, have the highest I.Q.'s of all scientists combined, and have the fewest social graces (i.e., are deficient in emotional relations, managing intrapersonal affairs, etc. etc.). What is most interesting to me is that she found that most hard scientists come themselves from families containing other scientists and/or where science is prominent, discussed and held up to be a worthwhile endeavor.

By contrast, she found in her studies that "soft" scientists (including biologists, botanists, and "life science" scientists generally) tend often to be extroverted, have lower general I.Q.s than their "hard" sciences counterparts (though generally above that of general populations), and mostly come from families without working scientists and where science is not seen as one of the main endeavors in life. Lower yet in her "life sciences" ratings were...anthropologists !!!...and archaeologists!!! Only the dubious practitioners of "social science" rated lower still. And it was her further determination that most of these followers of "the Sciences of Man" came from homes where business and/or mercantile activities were the norm: these wannabes had little to no familial exposure to "science" in any form in their formative years... and though extroverted - entrepreneurship and 'winning one's way to the top' characterized much of their personal philosophy...

Perhaps Alexander Pope was wrong when he wrote: "The proper study of Mankind is Man." Perhaps the proper study for Mankind ...is Nature! Surely the "hard" scientists – the Einsteins and the Newtons among us – have pushed further along in knowledge than their "soft" science counterparts... at least the "softest" if you will, among them: the bottom rung anthropologists and social workers, whose main contributions sometimes seem to be rancor both on and off stage, and impenetrable jargons of doublespeak!

Prior to the sudden emergence of the Ionian Greeks long ago, the World lay pining, wrapped in Religions and Superstition about it all – and especially about what Men actually were. Then the Ionians burst on the scene, and their wise men, unlike the gurus everywhere else, began to ask about ...Nature (!) and not just "Man"! Thus was Science born, and "hard" questions about "hard" subjects (Math and the stars, et al) began to bear fruit. The less Men pondered their own natures, the fewer mistakes they made and the further along overall knowledge advanced.

Well, I have become much too philosophical here and have wandered much too far afield, I fear. So I will retire from the scene and let others follow-on here. But it is an interesti