THE CATSKILL GEOLOGISTS BY PROFESSORS ROBERT AND JOHANNA TITUS - The Melting of the Ice

CATSKILL - Both of us had full professional lives as scientists before we retired and turned to writing. Robert published many research articles in peer reviewed paleontological journals. Johanna conducted serious laboratory work. Both of us also taught our sciences at the college level. Now, however, we have reached a stage in life when we no longer reach out for scientific research projects that need doing. That, however, doesn’t mean that science doesn’t sometimes reach out to us. 

Recently we were contacted by Jay Ciccone, a graduate student, studying archaeology at Harvard. His thesis work was aimed at establishing when the earliest Indian habitations occurred in the Mt. Merino vicinity. That’s across the Hudson, just northeast of the Village of Catskill. He thought that habitation may have occurred very soon, perhaps even immediately after the local glaciers had melted. So, it was important to him to determine exactly when that was. Jay enlisted Dr. Dorothy Peteet, a Senior Research Scientist at the Lamont Doherty Institute, associated with Columbia University. She has done extensive research on postglacial, vegetation-rich wetland sediments. Then the two of them contacted us about participating in the project. They were aware of our book on the Hudson Valley’s Ice Age history, and they knew we had worked in the Mt. Merino vicinity. Maybe we could be of help.

Well, we were worried that we might be playing a little out of our league, but the project sounded so interesting we couldn’t resist. One of us, Robert, arranged to join Jay and Dr. Peteet at a meeting at Jay’s home in Catskill. The three of us spent an hour or two just talking about the study. The main question was where, exactly, were there wetland deposits that could be sampled in order to determine their ages. The oldest of these would help determine that important moment when the local glaciers melted. Jay had an abundance of maps of the Mt. Merino region. Here and there, we saw evidence of post glacial wetlands and even post glacial ponds and lakes. Any of them might provide the evidence we needed. Any of them might even display artifacts from those Native Americans themselves. The right locations just had to be found.

And then we were off. We piled into Jay’s truck and took off across the Hudson. We circled Mt. Merino and stopped here and there to look at postglacial wetlands. We stopped and looked at what Johanna and Robert like to call Glacial Lake Columbia Greene. The most fun was our climb to the top of Mt. Merino itself, especially as Jay had permission to pass by all sorts of nasty looking “keep out” signs along the way. The view from up there is spectacular and it perhaps was just as good back when Indian cultures may have lived up there so many thousands of years ago. Jay showed us some possible Indian settlement sites and we looked for more wetlands. At the end Robert led us to a location at Olana to see a promising swampy site. See our photo. That’s Jay and Dr. Peteet looking at this wetland.

   Technically this is an archaeological study, but it will be predicated upon some serious ice age stratigraphy and a thorough study of the local wetland sediments. That’s why it’s a team project. The three of us had a lot of fun that afternoon. That’s the way this sort of science should be. Results? None yet, but we will get back to you on this as things develop.

   Contact the authors at randjtitus@prodigy.net. Join their facebook page “The Catskill Geologist.” Read their blogs at “thecatskillgeologist.com.”