Posted on 07/30/2003 4:51:48 PM PDT by sarcasm
ORT HANCOCK, N.J., July 23 — For most underwater archaeologists, the big dream these days is finding a shipwreck full of gold and antique treasures. But for Daria E. Merwin, the goal has a bit less glitter: discovering a 10,000-year-old heap of shells and some ancient arrowheads, spear points and cutting tools in the waters off New Jersey.
Ms. Merwin, a 33-year-old doctoral student in anthropology, says such artifacts would help prove her thesis that prehistoric Indians lived 6,000 to 10,000 years ago on the exposed continental shelf before it was inundated by water from melting glaciers.
For the next three weeks, Ms. Merwin and a dozen undergraduate students in underwater archaeology plan to dive in 30 to 60 feet of water in search of the clues on the Atlantic Ocean floor a few miles off Sandy Hook, N.J. The project is part low-budget exploratory survey, part learning experience for the students and part trailblazing adventure on the ocean bottom.
Ms. Merwin said her budget for the search was $15,000, most of it from the $800 fee each student paid to participate in exchange for six college credits in underwater archaeology. There was not enough money for sonar equipment or other high-tech underwater-sensing devices. So the search will consist of the team's diving from a boat usually chartered by scuba divers, scanning the bottom and excavating up to about a yard deep on any sites that look promising.
Professional archaeologists in New Jersey say the search is both groundbreaking and a long shot.
"They're trying to do something that hasn't been done," said Dr. Lorraine E. Williams, New Jersey's state archaeologist and curator of archaeology at the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton. "People for years have tried to figure out how to explore the ocean bottom. Nobody's really come up with clear evidence of prehistoric sites offshore."
Dr. Williams said that bottom currents were strong off Sandy Hook and over thousands of years have no doubt scattered, or buried, any ancient remnants on the continental shelf.
Ms. Merwin agrees that her quest will be difficult. "It's a pilot study," she said. "It's all exploratory." She said she knew of no similar systematic search in the New York region. And she likened the task to finding a prehistoric Indian needle in the haystack of the Atlantic.
But she is undeterred by the long odds. "We know there are sites," she said. "It's just a question of finding them. If we get really lucky, we'll stop looking and concentrate on excavating. It would be something I could work on with students for years and years and years."
New Jersey officials have given Ms. Merwin a permit to search in waters up to three miles offshore. Any artifacts uncovered, she said, will eventually be given to the state museum. In recent days, the team prepared for its offshore search by conducting an underwater archaeological survey here at the site of a ferry dock the National Park Service wants to build for visitors to the Sandy Hook part of the Gateway National Recreation Area.
Ms. Merwin has loved the ocean since childhood in Bayport, on Long Island. In the late 1990's, she said, she worked at a major underwater prehistoric Indian site found by experts at Florida State University beneath the Aucilla River near Tallahassee.
In 2000, she got a master's degree in nautical archaeology from Texas A & M University, which, she said, is one of the few American colleges offering graduate programs in underwater archaeology. She lectures on that subject at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she is studying for her doctorate.
Her thesis is that Indians in the Early Archaic period (10,000 to 8,000 years ago) and the Middle Archaic period (8,000 to 6,000 years ago) were far more prevalent on the now-submerged continental shelf than many archaeologists believe. She said it was widely believed that the ancient Indian population along the coasts of present-day New Jersey and Long Island did not grow profoundly until the Late Archaic period, from 6,000 to 3,000 years ago. "Maybe those changes in the late period aren't so radical and intensive," she said. "The population may have been higher in the early and middle periods, but very few sites have been found because they're submerged."
Hints supporting her theory do exist, experts said. Dr. Williams, the New Jersey state archaeologist, said that for years bones from mastodons that lived on the outer continental shelf have been dredged up by fishermen or washed onto beaches. Presumably, she said, ancient Indians hunted them. But, she added, no preserved underwater Indian settlements or clusters of artifacts have been found — and no one has looked.
Perhaps the most important clue was about 200 arrowheads and other artifacts that a woman from West Long Branch, N.J., Helene Corcione, said she found in 1995 while walking along the beach in Monmouth Beach, a few miles south of Sandy Hook. A few months earlier, the Army Corps of Engineers had rebuilt the beach in Monmouth Beach by pumping sand there from the bottom of the Atlantic about a mile off Sandy Hook.
Ms. Merwin and others say they believe the Corps project dredged up the artifacts. Corps officials say they have no way to verify or disprove that notion.
Dana Linck, the National Park Service's archaeologist for Gateway, is helping Ms. Merwin. He said that tentative tests and analysis on 37 of Ms. Corcione's collection showed they were from the Early Archaic and Late Archaic periods.
John Kraft, an archaeological expert on Lenape Indians in New Jersey, said that submerged sites could exist off New Jersey but that "people like the biggest best — big ships with gold and antiquities."
Ms. Merwin's team is doing what he called dirt archaeology. "What they're looking for are tiny little tools," Mr. Kraft said. "I hope she finds something. It would be great."
Then there is dendrochronology and you're home free if it's inside the date range they have catalogued. What is it now, 4000 years or more?
The documented dendrochronology record has passed 10,000 years now.
I have some 7,000 year old wood dredged up from Santa Rosa Sound in NW Florida. It was once part of a large forest.
What is Hancock's recent book? What did you think of Schoch's book?
Sorry, I misread you statement and thought that you said that you'd read the book. The title is Voyages Of The Pyramid Builders, I consider it a medicore book.
Yes, I think I saw that
. I saw a one hour documentary on the 'structures' underwater off the coast of Japan. Schoch was shown underwater (scuba gear) touring the area. He declared them natural formations and said that the 'find' off Cuba is probably natural also. He has a PhD in geology and geophysics. So....
History is the story of us, the human race. Stories don't get better than that.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
Bump.
Given a good bathymetry map, I'll wager I could tell her where to look. I'm not familiar with that stretch of coast, but I used to fish offshore of the Carolinas a good bit, and it's pretty easy to trace old landforms (terraces, bluffs, cliffs, etc) along the submerged portion of the Cape Fear River. One can follow its old course all the way out to the edge of the continental shelf. Indians camped in predictable areas along rivers...I have plenty of artifacts I found from looking in the right spots.
Do y'all remember sitting in school, 7th grade, absolutely sure you would be the one to make these discoveries? I do.
Some people actually do this stuff for a living. I'm jealous.
It would be interesting to conduct underwater surveys around the area of the Grand Banks. That area was a huge island, bigger even than Newfoundland is now, back then, according to the map. It is also much, much closer to Europe via the proposed Spain/France/Sea Ice arc of the Atlantic. The big problem with the Solutrean blade to Clovis point transition is the 7,000-10,000 years that separate them. But suppose the Solutrean Cro-Magnons lived peacefully on the Grand Banks Island UNTIL the rising sea forced them to the North American shore. If the Maritime provinces, New England and New York were too barren due to the recent ice melt, it's only natural that they would move Southeastwards--smack into places like Topper, Cactus Hill, etc. Interestingly enough, these sites have some of the EARLIEST Clovis remains. Not New Mexico or the Southern Plains but the Southeast USA.
The only problem with diving the Grand Banks is the extreme cold and the possible snaggings by fishing boats!
But, wouldn't it have been under ice 10,000 years ago? (The Gulf Stream wasn't flowing back then to keep it warm, right?)
The last big Ice Age 'melt-surge' occurred between 7-8,000 years ago.
According to the Center for the Study of the First Americans web site:
In the Last Glacial Maximum, at the time of the middle Solutrean period, a permanent ice rim connected the southwest coast of Ireland to the Grand Banks. In winter, the Atlantic froze as far south as the Bay of Biscay. The Gulf Current that today extends across the North Atlantic was shifted southward; it circulated clockwise, moving toward the Grand Banks and returned to the Bay of Biscay. Contrary to popular belief, the North Atlantic at this time was not unremittingly hostile. Short-term intervals and possibly longer periods of moderate weather would have enabled even inexperienced navigators to sail along the ice rim. Eventually hardy sailors would have traveled the short winter route to the Grand Banks, stupendously rich in fish and game. From there the leap to North America was assured.
Freeper Coyoteman does this for a living. He just published a book about the ancient Indians around the Monterrey Bay area.
I'm convinced they came. I just don't know which way.
Bye, Bye Beringia (8,000 Year Old Site In Florida)
The DNA from these folks have been declared to be 'European.'
No. Sorry.
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