Tom Lake's presentation at October meeting.

At our October meeting Tom Lake, Archaeologist with City/Scape: Cultural Resource Consultants, gave an very interesting briefing on his prehistoric findings at the future site of the Orange Regional Medical Center Site, off East Main Street in Middletown. They investigated the areas of the site that will be disturbed by the construction.  Finding no habitation sites, the artifacts recovered, which included 49 points, mostly date from the 4,800 to 3,700 year before present period.  The findings suggest that the site was used mostly for hunting/gathering and apparent tool repair, with indications that the people likely visited the studied site for periods of hours but not much longer.

He also enlightened as the conflicting pressures in Cultural Resource archaeology versus academic archeology and differenting priorities of archaeology versus paleontology studies.