announcements

Human-Landscape Interactions in the 21st Century begins with a review of background assumptions and concepts underpinning, and at times obscuring, modern research priorities and debates in human ecology and landscape studies from the perspective and data limits of archaeology.

The overview describes current archaeological and paleo-ecological evidence for prehistoric human/cultural impacts affecting, and responses to, environmental change, as well as recent popular theories attributing significant episodes of culture-change to various, and at times, biblical, catastrophic droughts and floods in human history.

International case studies are used to highlight the role archaeology is beginning to play in providing new insights into the processes of environmental trauma and degradation, sudden climate change, the loss of habitats and species diversity, sea level rise, the associated spectre of inundated coastal and river habitats, and of the often parallel pattern of desertification.

The treatment also addresses the logistical and policy implications of recent discoveries of well preserved archaeological and environmental data from formally ignored contexts beneath the sea and/or under the protective land-fill of urban landscapes.

Finally, it suggests some geospatial strategies, and data, our children will need to help address the challenges of environmental trauma in the future.

The Archaeology of Toxic and Hazardous Environments illustrates the use of applied technology to provide enhanced levels of data control in restricted time frames - and for archaeological challenges to the viability of historic preservation in dangerous settings.

Two examples of emergency rescue archaeology, one a Civil War complex under a contaminated Superfund site, the other a national monument damaged by natural disaster, illustrate the application of a range of applied technology solutions to emergency rescue archaeology in extreme settings.

Multiple categories of, overlapping - and often redundant - applied technology are discussed: all-weather field and laboratory operations, self-contained, "real-time" - or concurrent - data control and feedback, and the use of GIS and geophysics in tandem with advanced 3D paleo-environmental modeling to target areas of archaeological sensitivity in difficult contexts.

New classes of high speed non-contact 3D recording, single-camera computer-integrated photogrammetry and the first-generation of true-color 3D laser-radar (Lidar), illustrate the ability of modern archaeology to do justice to our cultural resources....to the highest standards, and without compromise to the quality, precision or adequacy of the data.

At the policy level, these strategies demonstrate the ability of modern archaeology to do justice to our dwindling culture history - even in highly dangerous, toxic, radioactive or ordnance-laced environments.

International Exchanges - The Netherlands Institute of Heratige

In October of 2009, I was honored to be invited - through the Dutch International Scholars Program, their AWAD (The Atlantic World and the Dutch) program on TransAtlantic contact and exchanges, in partnership with Netherlands Institute of Heritage (Erfgoed Nederland), the Nationaal Archief (National Archives), and the Dutch National Library - to participate in an international conference, “Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations” in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s arrival in the New World. My invited presentation, “New Insights into Dutch Material Culture,” focused on the archaological discovery and environmental implications of the original early 17th century waterfront block of the Dutch West India Company on Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan.

The seven-day exchange was tightly coordinated by Erfgoed Nederland to facilitate a series of fruitful bi-lateral discussions with heritage officials, archaeologists, and experts in historical botany at the National Botanical Garden's of both Amsterdam and Leiden, as well as access to the most current research and publications in Dutch botanical history. The visit culminated with a request by staff of the National Center for International Heritage Activities of Leiden that I give a seminar to graduate students at the University of Leiden on current research issues in the archaeology and environmental history of New Amsterdam. All travel and expenses were supported under the auspices of the Dutch International Visitors Program, the Roosevelt Center, the Free University of Amsterdam and the John Adams Institute.

In 2014 I was able to announce the on-line availability of my 1972 dissertation from the University of California, Berkeley: Early Ceramic Cultures of Andahuaylas, Apurimac, Peru. This report documents three thousand years of superimposed cultural deposits at the site of Waywaka, Andahuaylas, Apurimac, Peru. It also describes the discovery of early gold working and a gold worker’s tool kit in the earliest Initial Period deposits. After being largely unavailable (listed as microfilm at four universities) to scholars for the last forty years, the work is now scanned in high resolution as an Adobe pdf file.

It can be downloaded from the Publications page (follow this link) of this web site - www.Geospatial Archaeology.com. Once there, scroll down to 1972. Other Peruvian publications (Grossman 1972a and b; 1969-70; 1983) are also available. A 2014 preface to the 1972 manuscript explains my rationale for releasing the study.

2018 - Two important studies involving the use of photogrammetry, historic-GIS and true-color Lidar to document (in deep winter) a Civil War-era dam and foundry complex in the highlands of New Jersey (Grossman 2002 and 2004) are now digitized and avilable for viewing and download in the list of Publications. Videos and slideshow showing the discovery and reconstruction of virtual reality 3 color captures of the briefly exposed riverine elements of the Civil War hydraulic restructureing of the landscape and Morris Canal.

2020-2021 This past year saw the release of several important publications by Dr. Grossman, and in the first case, coauthors. . In 2020, the Polish editors of Contributions to New World Archaeology relleased Volumn 15 which included his publicattion of "Seeing Undergraound: The Feasability of Geophysical Remote Sensing in Coastal and Highland Peru". 2021 will also see the publication of an invited aricle before the VIII International Congress of Peruvian Archaeology., broadcast via Zoom out of Lima, Peru on August 17, 2021 It is scheduled for hard copy publication this year. This invited piece defends the antiquity of Dr. Grossman's discovery of early (ca 1500 BC) gold foil and a gold workers tool kit in the deepest levels of a site called Waywaka (3400m) overlooking the modern city of Andahuaylas in the south-central highlands of, Andahuaylas, Apurimac,Peru.

2019 In the twelve months spanning 2018 and 2019, I published three new articles, one by me alone and two with colleagues...with two additional pieces in press. Grossman 2018 was an invited article for the History of Archaeology Interest Group (HAIG) of the Society of American Archaeology rebutting the purported early use of Ground Penetrating Radar in Mexico in the World War II era. In search of submerged and buried shipwrecks, Grossman et al. 2019a deals with the use of trace elements to date historic Civil War-era sediment depths in the Hudson River fronting the West Point Foundry. Grossman et al. 2019b documents a 4,400 year sequence of prehistoric occupations found preserved with buried living floors under a utility road within the West Point Foundry as part of the archaeological mitigation of the Superfund site. See Publications page for citations and links.

Two additional articles are still in press, but are expected out this year. One deals with new AMS dates and the XRF analysis of early bronze from the south-central highlands of Peru. The second in press article is being published by Andean Past as an anthology of papers presented at the Society of American Archaeologty meeting in Alburquerque, NM in 2019 on the use of geophysical survey techniques at 12 Inca, pre-Inca and colonial sites for the Peruvian governement under the umbrella of UNESCO and the OAS.

I have uploaded digital copies of my Encyclopedia Britannica Annual Review of developments in New World Archaeology - "The Western Hemisphere"..accessable in my "Publications" bibliography folder under 1979-1995 as on-line links by publication year. Note: The Old World Britannica annual review was written and edited by Robert Braidwood.