Job: Archaeologist
Collection: CRSP
Title: Co-Director of the New York State Museum Cultural Resource Survey Program (CRSP)
I work with the Cultural Resource Survey Program, which is an applied research program of the Museum’s Research & Collections Division that provides research and assessment of archaeological and architectural resources for other state agencies. This extensive program assists these agencies with their state and federal historic preservation mandates. The CRSP is the largest outside-funded Museum program and employs about one-sixth of the Research & Collections Division’s staff.
Most of my career as an archaeologist has been spent in New York State, and I have worked on a wide variety of sites here, ranging from a small camp marked by chips left over from making a stone tool thousands of years ago to trenches dug by soldiers training to fight for America in World War I.
My main research interests focus on underwater archaeology and the study of maritime cultural landscapes to learn about how people in the past lived on and near the water. As a scientist, I love the process of discovery and then putting together all the clues we find in the field, in the lab, and even in the library to explain how the people who came before us might have lived. I also enjoy the challenge of solving problems, something I get to do regularly at the Cultural Resource Survey Program.