SERENDIPITY AND CIRCUMSTANCE IN THE CRAFTING OF A CAREER: Crouched beneath a tight rock overhang, Lucy Johnson carefully measures the length and width of the dark space surrounding her. For the past year, the professor of anthropology has been working with students at the Mohonk Preserve to survey the ridge and identify rock shelters used by some of the earliest people as they moved through the Shawangunks. As each piece of the puzzle falls into place, Johnson and her student researchers come closer to uncovering the travelers’ route and understanding how they used the land.
Growing up, Leah Weissburg ’08 liked to wrap her friends in toilet paper. “I would wrap them and then give a presentation on how to mummify someone,” she says. “I was definitely interested in archeology at an early age.” Since then, Weissburg, an anthropology major, has traveled to Israel for a two-month long excavation, and later to Belize, with the help of a grant through Vassar, to continue her field work. During her time at Vassar, she’s worked closely with Lucy Johnson, helping to dig and map the sites at Mohonk, while working in the lab to carefully analyze the pottery, arrow points, and flakes they recovered. Last summer, Weissburg recorded and analyzed students’ notes, drawings, and field journals in an effort to compile their research from Mohonk. “You have to be meticulous. A lot of people hate the lab work, but I don’t mind,” she says, recalling the hours spent analyzing bird bones from Johnson’s research in Alaska.
Andrew Duenas ’08 also spent the summer working with Johnson, and learning about archeology as he crawled through the rock gaps at Mohonk, searching for signs of past inhabitants and identifying rock shelters for future excavation. It was the first time Duenas, who’s studying cognitive science, had done archeology. “Lucy taught me everything I needed to know,” says Duenas, who discovered the field work through the Undergraduate Research Summer Institute (URSI), which offers programs, like archeology, that don’t always require previous experience. “The best part was going out into the field because it gives you a context for the materials you analyze in the lab,” he says, noting the challenge of identifying “thousands of tiny rocks.”
After a summer of research and field work, both Duenas and Weissburg emerged with a better understanding of Johnson’s passion for archeology. “She taught us to look at the evidence and to piece it together to find a story that can be verified,” says Duenas. “The way archeology teaches you to think is applicable to so many things outside of the field.” For Weissburg, digging nearby helped affirm the importance of preserving local history. “The more people know and have access to local and ancient culture, the more they feel connected to the land,” she says. “I really like feeling responsible for maintaining these artifacts so that they’re not lost forever.”
Over the years, Johnson has approached her own decision-making with the same mindset she uses for an archeological dig: start with the undefined, make a hypothesis, and then be open to any sudden changes or new opportunities that arise along the way. “It’s important to take advantage of opportunities that send you off in completely different directions,” says Johnson, who discovered anthropology after dropping an English major. “I decided if anyone asked me to analyze another book, I’d throw it at them,” she says with a laugh, “but I had no idea what I wanted to major in.” She took a semester off and, before she went back, read Columbia’s course catalog from cover to cover, checking off anything that sounded interesting. “I counted and there were more courses in anthropology than in anything else,” she recalls. “Two weeks into the semester, a grad student brought in his collection of Clovis and Folsom points [the tips off darts and arrows] from New Mexico and I fell madly in love with them. I’d always liked pretty stones, and these were the prettiest I’d ever seen. My fate was sealed.”
At Mohonk, Johnson and her team have already located at least 25 shelters used by the Native Americans. Each day in the field yields a new discovery as the group navigates through the giant boulders in search of potential shelters. With every shelter, a story is born. How many people could the shelter sleep? Is it close to a water source? “Archeology is all about stories,” she says. “You create a story about what you think happened and then you try to verify it.” After mapping out the potential caves, the group later returns to dig and sift through the shallow deposits, followed by the tedious task of analyzing and recording the data. (“As archeologists, we much prefer the digging.”) Last fall’s Trapps Gap Shelter excavation resulted in some exciting finds. Projectile points dating back to approximately 3500 BC, prehistoric pottery, and 17th- century clay pipe fragments were all uncovered.
Johnson’s work has taken her around the globe to research and excavate in places like Peru, Chile, Egypt, and Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. With funding from the National Geographic Society, the National Science Foundation, Ford and URSI, and Vassar faculty research funds, Johnson has enlisted the help of students on many of her trips, especially to Alaska, where students have assisted in the field and the lab. “My students have been in charge of presenting their research at the Alaska Anthropological Association meetings several times. All my colleagues are impressed by the work they do and their poise in presenting the research,” notes Johnson, who has brought students into the field since 1984 (she began teaching at Vassar in 1973).
Two biology majors who dubbed themselves “the bone gang” worked with Johnson several years ago to analyze a sea otter they acquired after it was illegally killed in Alaska. Studying the mammal, whose species has been in existence since prehistoric times, gave them insight into how the ancient hunters used sea otter bones as tools and how they butchered them for food. After three years of research, the project culminated with student presentations at conferences in Seattle, Washington, D.C., and finally in Anchorage, Alaska. The skeleton of the sea otter now resides in the A. Scott Warthin Jr. Geological Museum in Ely Hall.
Questioning her own assumptions once again, Johnson has returned her focus back to her roots in New York. “Since I’m from Riverdale, I had originally assumed this area was boring. Who wants to work at home?” she says. “As I do more field work here, however, the area seems so much more interesting than I had ever thought.” After at least half a dozen trips to Alaska with students, Johnson stayed in the Hudson Valley in the summer of 2005 to lead 13 Exploring Research students in an excavation of Denning’s Point in nearby Beacon. Exposed to archeology for the first time, the students excavated 80 shovel test pits, unearthing stone spear points dating back at least 4,000 years. Johnson returned to the site with a fresh batch of Exploring Research students the following year to continue the research. “I’ve realized between Denning’s Point and Mohonk just how exciting this area is,” she says. “Best of all, I don’t have to mount a huge expedition to Alaska to do my field work. I can come home at night, rather than clambering into a small, cold tent.”