In 1991, Dutchess County discovered it possessed a village it did not know about.
Fifty years earlier, an Army Air Corps training flight went terribly wrong at 5,000 feet and plunged vertically to Earth, killing Lt. Eugene Bradley at the site of the international airport north of Hartford that today bears his name. The impact was such that only the tail was visible.
The 600-year-old Dutchess village ”“ called Fox Meadows ”“ and the site of the plane crash are related by a mandate to involve business in the business of archaeology.
As Nick Bellantoni, state archaeologist with the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History in Storrs, said of the August 1941 plane crash, “They used a crane to pull the wreck out of the ground to recover the body and then dozed over the site. I suspect 7 million people pass through that airport and not seven know who Bradley was.”
Using a variety of techniques that included historic photos and ground-penetrating radar, Bellantoni recently found the crash site, ignominiously paved over in the rush to expand runways. “After four negative tests, we found a 14-foot-deep feature consistent with a crash crater beneath the runway.”
Finding that crash site is part of the same investigative work that has led Bellantoni to examine Colonial sites and Native American sites that date to 10,000 years ago ”“ all because in 1966, America stopped letting bygones be bygones.
With passage of the National Historic Preservation Act, construction projects requiring federal permits or projects that crossed state lines were forced to reckon with the past as they never had before. Local governments followed suit with their own layers of protection, the sort of work Bellantoni is responsible for in Connecticut, where the State Historic Preservation Office handles state and federal archaeological oversight. The many job-related sciences of such projects ”“ geology, hydrology, materials ”“ now had a stepsibling called archaeology that did not contribute to the bottom line, but was a cost of doing business, nonetheless.
The laws have made the Shelton, Conn.-based Iroquois Gas Transmission System (IGTS) a major contributor to cultural knowledge of the region even as it fulfills its original goal of providing fuel to 3 million-plus homes and businesses via a project reported to cost $700 million. But many other businesses contribute, as well, as is the case for Bellantoni, who rides herd on regional archaeology for Connecticut”™s 169 towns and municipalities and in so doing uncovered the Bradley crash site ”“ once thought to be in nearby woods.
The pipeline traverses Dutchess County on a northeast-to-southwest axis after crossing the Hudson River in Columbia County and heading into Fairfield County.
When its No. 2 Brookfield, Conn., compressor comes online in November, IGTS will propel 1.5 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas ”“ an additional 100 million cubic feet ”“ on its way from the New York-Canada border to Long Island. All that work was preceded by company-sponsored archaeology. From the oil fields of Wyoming to the mall next door and to the banks of Ten Mile River, before the dozers and pan-scrapers begin moving earth by the ton, scientists reconnoiter the right of way with garden shovels, shaker screens, trowels and even dental picks.
Archaeology for the 411-mile IGTS pipeline began in 1989, two years before the first pipe went in the ground. When that work ended, Dutchess County had a village it didn”™t know about: the Fox Meadows site near the Wappinger Creek, a small village, complete with a four-hearth oval longhouse, dating between 1400 and 1500 A.D.
The IGTS pipeline is always a work in progress: a compressor here, a spur there. So is the archaeology, which, to hear the company explain it, is part of doing business and, notable given the expense and studious pace, a task of which it”™s proud.
Further, to hear IGTS explain it, the grousing that accompanied antiquities legislation 30 years ago has died down. “There’s no bellyaching any more,” came the word. And that”™s coming from a company that has sent hundreds into the bush in search of history and prehistory. The IGTS minions ”“ cultural resource management firms ”“ have found hundreds of sites, including a site IGTS tunneled beneath to preserve and others that forced engineers to avoid them completely.
In 1990, this reporter was a then-31-year-old field archaeologist for a Georgia archaeology firm, Garrow and Associates, which contracted to IGTS to investigate the right of way for 18 months. Now, from a business perspective, the questions arose: Is archaeology a burden for a company? Should the laws be scrapped or modified to accommodate a tough economic climate? What happened to all the artifacts Garrow found?
“We still have material stored in various state universities,” said IGTS manager for environmental, health and safety Tim Barnes, a 14-year veteran of the natural gas conduit. “We hear from them occasionally about storage fees.” In Connecticut, Bellantoni”™s department acts as the IGTS artifact repository for 100 boxes of artifacts, plus reports. IGTS undertook the usual full archaeological megillah at its just completed Newtown, Conn., project, a mile-and-a-half long loop that adds, as company public affairs manager Ruth Parkins termed it, “compression and capacity.” Construction was imminent on the new compressor No. 2 in Brookfield when she spoke. As always, the laws that govern and mandate the dance between archaeology and the private sector are in play.
IGTS is in on a well-known secret among business people, especially those who build: that to practice their livelihoods is to sponsor a lot of archaeological research. The company is ahead of most in the arena of outreach, having produced a full-color, 64-page book, edited by Rensselaer County-based Hartgen Archaeological Consultants archaeologist Carol Raemsch, about what archaeologists digging along the pipeline route found.
Archaeology is labor intensive and, therefore, costly. There”™s digging, analysis, reports and storage to factor in. Barnes could not put a price tag on IGTS”™s archaeology bill, citing two decades of work and many firms, including one that surveyed the Sound bottom between Long Island and the Bronx using side-scan sonar, producing 3-D underwater images.
Barnes would not divulge specific site locations to protect them from raiders, called pothunters for the prehistoric pots they covet.
Despite costs, Barnes said the company is pleased with the payback:
“We’re very conscious of being a big part of the communities we work in,” Barnes said. “And we”™re very conscious of the environment. We don”™t want to disrupt the history of the country without investing in a record for future generations.” He said it would not be practical to adapt the laws to accommodate the economic downturn, saying, “I don”™t see how that could be done.”
IGTS runs seven compressor facilities, all of them scoured for hints of past occupation. In Athens in Greene County, the archaeological investigation conducted by Hartgen Archaeological Associates uncovered a Clovis point, among the oldest artifacts on the continent, dating to the first humans to arrive from Asia. (This reporter also did that archaeology.)
Sometimes, the ancients were just passing through, but left quite a record anyway. From the Raemsch book:
“The Five Mile Dame site located on the Mohawk River revealed evidence that people inhabited that spot in Central New York at least two separate times: once around 5,400 years ago and again about 3,200 years ago.” They did not build the structures associated with permanent habitations.
Archaeology is only concerned with human activities. As a well-known archaeological T-shirt reads: We don”™t do dinosaurs. But IGTS cannot be so picky, even if it does not do dinosaurs. The company does sponsor endangered-species and wetlands studies and catalogs mammals when appropriate, as it did recently for its “Eastchester” project from Long Island to the Bronx, the same project that featured the side-scan radar.
The IGTS pipe begins in Waddington on the St. Lawrence River, where IGTS takes delivery of Canadian natural gas.
The pipe is 30 inches from Waddington to Wright in Schoharie County. It is 24 inches from Wright to Commack, Long Island. The Eastchester spur, too, is 24 inches.
New layers have been added to the Historic Preservation Act: state and local archaeological regulations. IGTS and others contract with firms that test for cultural activity and, if necessary excavate what they find. It”™s a labor-intensive, expensive process, but Barnes said it”™s part of the process and “there”™s no bellyaching about it.”
When the laws first began to appear, Barnes said, there was resistance. “But that was 30 years ago. Now, businesses know what is expected.”
Doug Mackey is the New York State Historic Preservation Office program analyst. His department is involved in archaeology on the federal, state and local levels, making sure the work is planned properly, that the proper questions are being addressed and then determining what, if anything, must be done to preserve the record.
The Historic Preservation Act covers federal concerns and applies whenever federal funding, approvals or permitting is required; this was the law under which IGTS built its pipeline because two trip-hammers for federal permitting kicked in: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission permits were required and the pipe crossed the New York-Connecticut border.
Mackey reviews work standards before any project begins. More than a dozen New York state reviewers weigh in on sites, all toward determining if a building or site is worthy of designation for the National Register of Historic Places. The department also consults Native Americans about sites. “The whole process is one of consultation,” Mackey said.
Key to the process from a business perspective is the MOA ”“ memorandum of agreement ”“ that details beforehand what work is to be done.
“Archaeology can appear to be open-ended to a business and that can seem scary,” Mackey said. “Before any work begins, we make sure we”™re all on the same page. There”™s a plan. We have come up with the research questions. Then there is a memorandum of agreement and everyone signs on to it. Once the MOA is in place, it takes something big to change it.”
Mackey said the overarching scheme is to minimize impact: first, by avoiding sites when possible; second, by addressing technical elements of historic structures to preserve them; and third, either by protecting sites in place or seeing that they are excavated properly. When the work is completed, Mackey”™s department reviews the work to make sure it satisfies the contract.
A common question among businesses is: How many sites are there? The answer in the vernacular: a lot. A program at Norwalk Community College has dug to satisfy local ordinances and has found hundreds.
Professor Ernest Wiegand runs Norwalk Community College”™s archaeology-as-an-avocation program, which attracts up to a dozen students at a time and which dates to 1975. “In that time, students have found 250-300 sites,” he said, all due to local statutes. “A great number of sites have been discovered and either preserved or, more likely, mitigated that would have gone by the wayside without local efforts.” Among those sites are 40 from the era between 6,000 and 3,800 years ago, the period that precedes the common use of pottery.
Wiegand said that is his experience the federal, state and local laws do a good job of protecting sites.
Dead people pose a unique challenge for businesses, since remains are protected even to the point of repatriating old skeletons from museum drawers. Bellantoni handles all burials in Connecticut as mandated by law. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act signed by President George H.W. Bush offers intense protection of human remains and kicks in immediately when remains are found. Walmart discovered just how potent the law is when a number of burials in Leeds, Greene County, killed a planned supercenter in 1996 that was later built several miles away in Catskill.
