I must admit that over the past year or so I've been feeling a bit smug and righteous over some of the events unfolding over at "de Oude Stadt," the city of Albany.

When I was City Archeologist for Albany in the early 1970's, I attempted to write legislation to save the city's archeological resources. Additionally, with a federal grant, I began renovating St John's Parochial School for a city museum dedicated to promoting the city's prehistoric and historic heritage. That was foiled by the Albany Machine and Bishop Hubbard who decided to take the school back - after we spent 75k renovating it. My position was terminated for my stance on preserving the Pine Bush shortly after.

In the early 1980's, under the Whalen administration, I proposed the creation of an Office of Natural Resources with a mandate on preparing a database of the city's archeological, historical, and natural treasures and to incorporate them into preplanning so they could be preserved. My position was also terminated for my stance on preserving the Pine Bush.

As many of you know, my stand on the Pine Bush never faltered. On the other hand, the scrambling going on in Albany today looks like the definition of Brownian movement. In the past year, the city hired a new "free" city archeologist with a specialty in Yugoslavia. Between taking the time to misrepresent Louise Basa, President of the New York Archeological Association, over the latest fiasco going down on Broadway, he has been formulating a plan for dealing with the archeological resources of the city.

Imagine that! What kind of heritage tourist dollars do you think the city would be raking in today if they listened 30 years ago?

I certainly don't want to discourage this move to address the city's resources. They desperately need an archeological commission and protection laws, but lets get the priorities right.

Two professional archeologists will sit on the revamped historic sites commission. Good move! Of course, it depends on the two individuals, whether they will be champions for those resources, or just patsies for an administration, which up to this point likes to put parking garages on archeological features. Unfortunately, their proposed definition of archeological site doesn't even mention industrial archeology, so I guess the interest of the city archeologist will stop around 1850?

If the promulgators of this legislation had bothered to talk to any of the half dozen people in the area that actually KNOW the prehistory and history of Albany, perhaps they could draw up better language, but the camps have been drawn, and both sides have hunkered down into their squares. By avoiding the real experts, the battles will continue in the media and courts.

The ordinance to create the new city archeologist position doesn't mandate that the person know anything about Albany, only that they meet the Secretary of the Interior's professional qualification standards for archeology. Those standards state that they must have at "least one year of full-time professional experience or equivalent specialized training in archeological research, administration or management." Additionally, one needs "at least four months of supervised field and analytic experience in general North American archeology," and at least one year of full-time professional experience at a supervisory level in the study of archeological resources of the prehistoric or historic period. Seems like the new old world archeologist is already out of a job?

All the fuss is over how the city is avoiding doing archeology for a new office building on Broadway next to the parking garage that buried the 18th century rum distillery two years ago - remember that one!

The new city archeologist has been accused of using ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to give the green light on development. GPR sends radar down into the ground and the reflections are used to map buried features if they exist. Here lies the problem. It apparently missed some foundations - GPR has many limitations, but it really demonstrates the real issue here. Historian John Wolcott could have easily shown him some old maps showing the presence of 18th century buildings on the site!

Archeology is getting down on your knees with trowels and peeling each layer of ground back like an onion while looking for clues of past human activity. It's the only way to do it. A piece of bone shaped into an awl is as important as a large building foundation. GPR cannot show a buried hearth or projectile point a foot or two beneath a 19th century foundation, for example. There are thousands of years of prehistory and history buried here. If you are going to formulate policy for these resources, you must include ALL of it, not for a select time period.

Any archeologist who really knows Albany could have told you that.