Council of Virginia Archaeologists

	Council of Virginia Archaeologists

COVA Committee Reports

Certification

Certification Committee
George Tolley
Bruce Baker and Michael Barber are co-chairs of the Virginia Certification Committee.

Lost Certification Students

The certification committee is compiling a list of all graduates and current students enrolled in the program. If anyone knows of, or digs up someone connected to the certification program please contact Bruce Baker, Co-Chair of the certification committee, bakerbw@earthlink.net, phone number is (804) 271-4718.

Membership Committee
Esther White

The membership committee is pleased to announce Derek Wheeler, Wayne Boyko and Ellen Brady are COVA's newest members.

Derek Wheeler is a research archaeologist at Monticello where he has worked since 1996. He holds a master's in anthropology from the University of Virginia and did his undergraduate work at University of California in Berkeley. He has worked at Plimouth Plantation and Flowerdew Hundred, as well as numerous sites in California.

Wayne Boyko is the director of the archaeology program at the Conservation Management Institute at Virginia Tech University. Prior to this position he spent almost 10 years at Fort Bragg, NC as the program manager and director of their Cultural Resource Management Program. He holds a Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University and a BA from the University of Winnipeg in Canada.

Ellen Brady graduated from James Madison University and went on to earn an MA at Texas Tech University. She is currently employed by Cultural Resources, Inc.'s Norfolk office as a project manager. She spent many years with Coastal Carolina Research prior to her return to Virginia.

VDHR/ASV/COVA THREATENED SITES COMMITTEE MEETING
Tuesday, July 6, 2004 in Charlottesville , Virginia

The Threatened Sites Committee, or representatives thereof, have met three times with members of VDHR. In April, 2005, the committee met to review thirteen applications for threatened sites funding. Projects considered included work at the Smucker property in Alexandria Virginia, the Hoge Site, 44ST266 a civil war encampment, Hungars Plantation, Maycocks Point, 44AB14 and 64 in the Charlottesville area, soapstone quarries in southwest Virginia, and Germanna, as well as a series of proposals involving diverse research studies such as chemical anlaysis of soils, trace element analysis of jasper, etc. It was generally recognized that the new proposals were better and more completely prepared and were therefore, relatively easy to evaluate. The idea of setting a meeting date in April, before the onset of the field season also worked well.

A major issue that was addressed focused on the need to disseminate the rich body of data gathered several years ago from the Jordan's Point area. This project had received considerable financial support from the threatened sites committee with outstanding results. At this meeting it was deemed both appropriate and necessary that efforts be made to make available the rich volume of data gathered on the prehistory and early settlement of this site locale. Two additional meetings were scheduled and held that were to discuss the manner in which such a presentation was to be pursued. It is the consensus of the committee that all of the working reports would be digitized and made available to researchers on CD/DVD. It was also agreed that a priority concern would be the preparation of a quality popular report for general or popular use and distribution. The last goal, and that given the lowest immediate priority, was to establish a set of technical reports focusing on the various prehistoric and specialized historic issues addressed by the site archaeology.
At present work is focusing on preparing the CD/DVD and with seeking authors appropriate to preparing the popular report.

Members of COVA and other interested research groups should make themselves aware of the opportunities provided through the threatened sites program. This information is available on the DHR Web page.

Public Education

The Public Education committee organised the 12th Annual COVA Public Symposium
October 28, 2005 at the Shenandoah University History Center, 20 Cameron Street
Winchester, VA

Fleshing out the 400th: New Insights into Virginia History and Prehistory

Speakers:

Mike Klein,
University of Mary Washington
"The Past 50 Years of Hunter-Gatherer Research: A Revisionist History of Pleistocene North America"

Martin Gallivan,
College of William and Mary
"Early Seventeenth Century Maps of Virginia and the Native Landscapes of Tsenacommacah"

Dennis Pogue,
Historic Mount Vernon
"Seventeenth-Century Virginia Beyond Jamestown: What We Have Learned Since 1957"

The Symposium was sponsored by The Council of Virginia Archaeologists and Shenandoah University