Report from the Robert E. Funk Memorial Archaeology Foundation Fall 2017
2017 Grants
The 2017 grant submissions as a group were the most competitive yet received, so competitive in fact that 3 grants were awarded rather than the expected 2, while a fourth proposal may be rewritten for funding next year after a smaller trial study. Briefly, grants have been provided to:
- Dr. Tim Abel for radiocarbon analysis of Jefferson County Iroquois sites;
- Jessica Vavrasek (Ph. D. Candidate, SUNY Albany) for isotopic analysis of dog remains from archaeological sites to attempt to reconstruct Jefferson County Iroquois migrations; and
- Amy Fox (Ph. D. Candidate, University of Toronto) for morphometric analysis of Northeastern region broadspears as a way of discerning and discussing patterns of information sharing among Late Archaic/Transitional societies. (The Funk Foundation grant supports Ms. Fox’s study of collections from New York State sites, although the full investigation is multistate).
A grant proposal for isotopic analysis of passenger pigeon remains from the Lamoka Lake site by Dr. Susan Pilaar Birch, in collaboration with Dr. Cregg Madrigal was not funded but may be re-proposed in 2018 after a smaller study testing method and technique. One of the goals would be to better understand the seasonality of hunting passenger pigeons at Lamoka Lake.
2016 Grants
The Funk Foundation has received and is reviewing reports on the projects by Albert E. Fulton II and Joshua Kwoka.
- Albert Fulton’s grant supported his Ph.D. research in the Department of Geography, Michigan State University. His project is titled: “Holocene Paleoecology of Native American Land-Use Dynamics in the Genesee Valley, West-Central New York State, USA”. The grant provided radiocarbon dating applied to the paleo-environmental analysis of a sediment core from the Rush Oak Openings (ROO) wetland site situated in the Genesee Valley region. Al Fulton’s Ph.D. dissertation defense is scheduled for late this fall.
- Dr. Joshua Kwoka’s grant supported his lithic analysis investigating communities of practice at the Iroquoian Simmons site in Erie County. This site was excavated by Dr. Marian White in the 1960s. His project is titled “Identifying Late Woodland Communities of Practice: Debitage Stylistic Variation and Residency Patterns at the Simmons Site, Town of Elma, New York.”
2015 Grant
The Funk Foundation has received and is reviewing the final grant report
submitted by Dr. Ammie Mitchell in September. Her project is titled “Symbolism in
Coarse-Crystalline Temper: Understanding the Development of Early Pottery in New
York State.” Ammie recently completed her Ph.D. dissertation at the University of
Buffalo. The Funk Foundation grant supported Ammie’s dissertation research by
providing funds to pay for petrographic slides of pottery thin sections.
Contact the Funk Foundation
By calling Ed Curtin at (518) 928-8813 or emailing ecurtin12003@yahoo.com.
–Respectfully submitted by Ed Curtin on behalf of the other Funk Foundation Directors
(Alfred Funk, Paul Huey, Jon Lothrop, and Patterson Schackne).