Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

THE ARCHAEOLOGIST - Vol. 1, January 2019 is on its way to the membership.

January 2019 "THE ARCHAEOLOGIST"

Send in your submissions for January 2019 "THE ARCHAEOLOGIST" to Clif at ioccnysaa@gmail.com.
Stories, reports, photos, events, etc.

2018 Final Meeting of the Year & Holiday Grab Bag!

The December 21st meeting will feature the Holiday potluck dinner and the Grab-Bag.

** Please let Stephanie know what you are bringing so we can make sure there will be a variety of food and drinks at the party.

Here are the rules for the grab-bag:

1. You can attend the meeting and not participate in the grab-bag.
2. Anyone who wishes to participate in the grab-bag needs to contribute one or more gift.
3. Although archaeological themes are welcome, other gift ideas are also acceptable such as baked items. In other words, simply use your imagination.
4. We are suggesting the value of the gift be up to $10.
5. All gifts need to be wrapped and identified as to gender-specific if needed.
6. All participants draw a number.
7. Number 1 goes first followed by consecutive numbers.
8. Upon taking a gift it needs to be opened and shown to the group.
9. Following number 1 each of the other participants can either take a gift from the table or from one of the other participants with a lower number, however, you cannot take the same gift back twice in the same turn.
10. If your gift is taken you can go back to the table and take another gift, or take a gift from another person.
11. After all the numbers are completed and gifts opened, the person with number one can exchange their gift with anyone they choose.
12. All participants are encouraged to take a gift from another person if they like that gift. This is what makes it more interesting. So don’t be bashful.

The ARCHAEOLOGIST for December 2018

The ARCHAEOLOGIST

for December 2018 has been sent to the membership.

Please let us know if your's does not arrive.

Happy Holidays!

October 2018 Program: A GROUND SLATE POINT FOUND ON THE HUDSON RIVER ESTUARY

Program following the October 2018 Chapter meeting:

A GROUND SLATE POINT FOUND ON THE HUDSON RIVER ESTUARY

by

John Phillips 

In October 2016 a polished, notched slate biface was found by the author on the east shore of the Hudson River, 25 miles north of Manhattan.

Subsequent inquiries about this anomalous find led to a re-examination of slate as a tool stone, the manufacture and physical properties of slate bifaces, the distribution of slate projectile points and blades in Northeastern North America, and theories about the technology’s origin. 

Excavation Volunteers Needed

New York State Archaeology DIG THIS OPPORTUNITY! Excavation Volunteers Needed We are writing to make you aware of a very special excavation coming up in September, 2018. Excavation volunteers are encouraged to join Jonathan Lothrop, Curator of Archaeology, and the New York State Museum team as we continue our excavation of the Owlville Pine, South site in Canastota, NY. Owlville Pine, South is a Crowfield Paleoindian site dating back approximately 12,000 years. Crowfield habitation sites are extremely rare, and the Crowfield people are among the least understood of the Paleoindian groups that visited New York State. We will be digging from September 10-14 and then again from September 17-21. No prior experience is necessary. We welcome volunteers to join us for a few days or for the entire 2 weeks, whatever fits your schedule. For more information please contact Mike Beardsley at 315-345-5094 or email Mike at casketeer@aol.com. You may also contact Jon Lothrop at jonathan.lothrop@nysed.gov or at 518-486-2992 after September 4th. NYSAA

Copyright © 2018 New York Archaeological Council / New York State Archaeological Association, All rights reserved.

https://mailchi.mp/0623b3a394f3/excavation-volunteers-needed?e=f462d2643b

Veronica Ditko publishes "A Rock Solid History of Hawthorne, New Jersey!"

Chapter member Veronica MacDonald Ditko publishes:

A Rock Solid History of Hawthorne, New Jersey: How stones play a part in this town's history!

See more on Facebook at "Veronica MacDonald Ditko, Writer." 

"A Rock Solid History of Hawthorne, New Jersey" Find it on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com! 

Reminder: Chapter Picnic replaces July meeting!

Reminder: Chapter Picnic replaces Orange County Archaeological Chapter July meeting! 2018 Chapter Picnic

The June 2018 Newsletter has been sent to the membership!

May Chapter Meeting

President's message:Hello all and my apologies for the last month being so quiet. Thank you all for the well wishes last month for my son who is doing great now! I was able to still attend and present at the annual NYSAA conference in Syracuse and we all had a wonderful time! This Friday night 5/18 Barry Kass will be presenting:

"Ancient Civilizations in Mesoamerica: the Olmecs and the Mayans"

For our June meeting I will be presenting my rescheduled program "From Boarders to Borscht and Back" and mark your calendars for the chapter Annual Picnic at the Town of Mount Hope Park on Sunday July 22nd from 12p-4p.  I look forward to seeing you all!

Stephanie

ps: The meeting MAY be upstairs if it is raining! The community event is scheduled for outside and will be moved indoors to our normal meeting space if it rains. If needed, we will post a sign on the door but the upstairs entrance is located at the top of the parking lot at the parking lot entrance.

February 16, 2018 Program

Dave Johnson’s program will discuss astronomical alignments associated with Ceremonial Landscapes throughout North America. On this example, the sun’s shadow points to various pictographs during different seasons. Thus, this is a calendar.

Program following January, 2018 meeting

January 19, 2018 Program: 

The Quest for the Lost Tomb of Chan Bahlum:

Investigations at Palenque, Mexico and Robinson Crusoe Island, Chile 

The ancient Maya culture of Central America has fascinated scholars and the general public alike for more than 175 years since the pioneering explorations of Catherwood and Stephens in the 1840s.  With soaring temple pyramids and exquisite sculpture and hieroglyphic inscriptions, the mysteries of the Maya stimulate the imagination in ways unparalleled by most other pre-Columbian civilizations of the western hemisphere.  Since his very first visit to Palenque in southern Mexico in 1995, archeologist Jim Turner has sought to plumb the depths of this enigmatic culture in an attempt to elucidate the sublime sophistication of their constructions and the stunning accuracy of their astronomical knowledge.

During a seemingly unrelated adventure in 1996 on Robinson Crusoe Island off the coast of Chile, Jim stumbled upon a megalithic monument larger than the Egyptian Sphinx which depicted the Mayan Sun God and a crouching jaguar, the two central images depicted in Palenque’s Temple of the Sun (shown above).  Assuming it to be the work of the ancient Palenque king Chan Bahlum, Jim has spent the last 20 years patiently unravelling the secrets of this monumental masterpiece.  As perhaps the most famous of all Maya kings, Pakal the Great was buried upon his death in his famous tomb deep within the Temple of Inscriptions by his son Chan Bahlum who inherited the throne and presided over a Golden Age of art and architecture that has caused Palenque to be considered the crown jewel of Maya cities.  But Chan Bahlum’s burial chamber, often referred to as the “Holy Grail of Mayan Archeology”, has never been identified despite decades of excavations within each of his temple pyramids.  This lecture will detail the evidence that suggests Chan Bahlum is entombed behind his funerary monument on the quasi-mythical Island of the Jaguar Sun.

With the knowledge of the distant island monument guiding his research, Jim was able to reverse-engineer an interpretation of the Palenque hieroglyphic inscriptions and reveal an unknown dimension of geographical knowledge and scientific accuracy hitherto unrecognized for an ancient civilization.  Beyond the technical and navigational abilities required just to travel the 3,000 miles to the treasure island, the Maya demonstrated their mastery of astronomy by positioning the monument at a location that witnessed the final total solar eclipse of 2012 a mere one degree above the ocean horizon at sunset at the end of a 5,000-year calendar cycle.  The astounding precision of their prediction of this eclipse is essentially beyond even our most advanced science of the present day.  And it is the eclipse geometry incorporated into the island monument as well as in the temple complex of Chan Bahlum in Palenque that elicits the elegant solution to the mystery of the location of his hidden burial chamber.  Building on new data from his eighth expedition to the island in December 2016 to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the monument’s discovery, Jim will detail his methods and conclusions regarding the likely location of the entrance to the tomb of Chan Bahlum.

Jim Turner has a Masters degree in Mesoamerican archeoastronomy and is the founder and Principal Investigator of STRATA Cultural Resource Management, an archeological consulting firm based in New York.  He has conducted more than 100 archeological investigations across New York State and has identified dozens of sites ranging from 4,000-year-old Archaic ceremonial caches to more recent Revolutionary War-era sites.  He flies a Phantom drone and utilizes a Makerbot 3D printer to help image and model the aspects of some of his discoveries.  He is also an avid eclipse chaser with visits to 9 different countries to witness these rare astronomical events with his most recent trip in August 2017 to Cerulean, Kentucky where he positioned himself along the centerline at the Point of Greatest Eclipse.  He is currently planning his ninth expedition to Robinson Crusoe Island where he hopes to fly a drone-mounted infrared camera and use a remote inspection camera to reveal for the first time in over 1,300 years the interior of the tomb of Chan Bahlum.