To the OP ED EDITOR New York Times

 In response to the interview with Jack Fortmeyer, retired Brooklyn Firefighter and bottle collector (One in 8 Million, NY Times, July 9, 2009)

 It is gratifying to see how taken people are with archaeological discovery, but so discouraging to see how many applaud what is tantamount to looting archaeological features and denigrate those who protest. This became apparent from the response to an interview with a retired Brooklyn firefighter the New York Times featured in its “One in 8 Million” series---a man who, by his own account, knocks on the doors of Brooklyn home owners and offers to dig the backyard privy pit or cistern that, usually unbeknownst to them, is situated behind their 18th or 19th century row houses. The reward for allowing entrée to the yard and to the features is to keep what artifacts appeal to the home owner even though, by our laws, it is actually all theirs. The “digger,” however, gets to keep the sought after bottles, a colorful and ubiquitous component of the privy fill, some of them discarded by the original family in residence, others a component of the fill introduced in abandoned privy pits and cisterns. What is destroyed in this amicable interchange is the context of those colorful bottles. The context is often a rounded-out picture of the lives of those who long ago bought and used the bottles and the invaluable information to be gained from other, less intriguing objects in association with them. It is amazing how much a single piece of pottery, for example, might reveal: its maker, its country of origin, its date of manufacture and, therefore an estimate of its date of deposition, its social implications, and what kind of expenditure was made by the person who bought it and discarded it. Its value to a trained archaeologist is limitless; its value to a bottle seeker is zero, and, therefore it is ignored.   

While the digger may be a colorful character (which our retired Brooklyn firefighter certainly is), he is nonetheless a looter who is destroying invaluable information and selfishly keeping the “good stuff” for himself, either to add to his collection, to trade, or to sell. This behavior is wanton, selfish, and often illegal. And the NY Times has glorified these acts, and the participants in them, by creating a very sympathetic and folksy portrait of a retired Brooklyn firefighter as a benign seeker of bottles. This is shameful.

 Although our retired Brooklyn firefighter, who uses his former status as a defender of the people as entrée, says he asks permission, there isn’t a trained archaeologist (whether professional or avocational) working in the five boroughs who hasn’t had to ward off what we call “Pot Hunters,” often to no avail. Two instances come to mind. The first was at New York City’s first major archaeological excavation, at the former Staat Huys (City Hall) site in Lower Manhattan, where painstaking work had finally exposed an 18th-century well slated to be excavated the following day. Hand blown bottles were among the glimpsed artifacts. But this was not to be, since the first dig also met with the first onslaught of pot hunters. When the archaeologists arrived the next morning, the well had been completely cleaned out. No permission was sought or given in that instance. Nor was it sought or given at the Mugavero site in Brooklyn, where trained archaeologists carefully excavated five privies over two week’s time. These were features that were to be destroyed during construction of a nursing home for the Catholic Medical Center of Brooklyn and Queens. What came from this endeavor were details about the mid-19th-century lives of the middle class doctors and lawyers and their families who had lived on the block. At least three more privy pits not slated for destruction, and, therefore left intact, were emptied of their contents in a single day (the guard hired to keep them safe apparently thought a teapot was sufficient payment to allow the illegal entree). The bottles were removed and all else thrown helter-skelter back into the pit. And we were heartsick. You see, trained archaeologists only “dig” when there is a research question to be addressed or when salvage archaeology is in order, that is, when the resource is going to be destroyed. Otherwise, it is best to leave these informative objects for another time, when it is useful or imperative to remove them from the ground. For archaeological excavation, like looting, destroys. But unlike the bottle seeker, the destruction caused by the trained archaeologist is mitigated by the records kept about the dig and by the information recovered for the greater good. Yes, shame on the New York Times for condoning and glorifying the wanton destruction of an irreplaceable resource.  

The writer is president of Professional Archaeologists of New York City (PANYC), a not-for-profit organization of archeologists whose members include practitioners, educators, and regulatory agency personnel.  

Joan H. Geismar, Ph.D.

President, Professional Archaeologist of New York City (PANYC)