May 19, 2005: Headlines: COS - Tunisia: Archeology: St. Augustine Record: Tunisia RPCV Christine Lee Newman has spent 25 years finding, analyzing and preserving Florida's archaeological heritage and yet still gets excited about each new discovery

Peace Corps Online: State: Florida: February 8, 2005: Index: PCOL Exclusive: Florida : May 19, 2005: Headlines: COS - Tunisia: Archeology: St. Augustine Record: Tunisia RPCV Christine Lee Newman has spent 25 years finding, analyzing and preserving Florida's archaeological heritage and yet still gets excited about each new discovery

By Admin1 (admin) (pool-151-196-245-37.balt.east.verizon.net - 151.196.245.37) on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 4:37 pm: Edit Post

Tunisia RPCV Christine Lee Newman has spent 25 years finding, analyzing and preserving Florida's archaeological heritage and yet still gets excited about each new discovery

Tunisia RPCV Christine Lee Newman has spent 25 years finding, analyzing and preserving Florida's archaeological heritage and yet still gets excited about each new discovery

Tunisia RPCV Christine Lee Newman has spent 25 years finding, analyzing and preserving Florida's archaeological heritage and yet still gets excited about each new discovery

Local archaeologist wins state award

By Peter Guinta
St. Augustine Record
St. Augustine, Fla.
May 19, 2005

Caption: Archaeologists Christine Newman and Ray McGee excavate a group of canoes.

Christine Lee Newman has spent 25 years finding, analyzing and preserving Florida's archaeological heritage and yet still gets excited about each new discovery.

That contagious positive energy, work ethic and enthusiasm led the Florida Anthropological Society to honor Newman with the 2005 Ripley P. Bullen Award, named after an influential Florida archaeologist of the 1940s and 1950s.

"I feel very honored," Newman said, showing off the plaque saying she had distinguished herself by "furthering cooperation among professional and avocational archaeologists" in Florida.

The society is a loose association of the 15 independent archaeological and anthropological societies organized in Florida.

Newman was nominated by the St. Augustine Archaeological Association, according to St. Augustine's city archaeologist, Carl Halbirt.

"Chris expresses the spirit of what this award is all about," Halbirt said. "It was for her professional expertise as well as her giving to the community."

Newman, a Vilano Beach resident, graduated from the University of Florida in 1976 with a degree in English, education and journalism.

Then she spent two years in Tunisia with the Peace Corps.

"It took a while to adjust. But how can you be in another country and not be interested in anthropology and archaeology?" she said.

Upon her return to the United States, she took a job with an environmental consulting firm.

"I've always had the interest, but never had the job opportunity," she said.

She entered the University of South Florida, majoring in applied anthropology, doing a thesis on a prehistoric site north of Tampa and eventually earning a master's degree.

She also worked a site in the Florida Keys where researchers found debris from an unnamed Labor Day hurricane in 1935.

That storm killed hundreds of people who were not warned about it in time, she said.

She got to St. Augustine in 1987 and worked for the Historic St. Augustine Preservation Board in the Spanish Quarter and the city archaeology program.

In 1989, she was hired for the conservation land program and by 1995 was running it. Now Newman supervises all state lands purchased through the Florida Forever program -- more than 1 million acres.

"Each property has a land manager, who is responsible for keeping track and protecting the archaeological and cultural resources there," she said. "Our job is to survey and document new ones. Obviously, we don't have time to find them all."

Her office in St. Augustine's Government House is one of two making up the Conservation and Recreational Lands department. The other is in Tallahassee.

"The wonderful thing about this job is that I get to see the best sites in the state, all the properties purchased for protection -- swamps, prairies and sloughs," she said.

Robin Moore, St. Johns County's new historic resource specialist, said he's worked with Newman for three years.

"She's a wealth of information and is always smiling," Moore said. "She's really good at assessing the needs of the community and interpreting historic perspective into those needs."

Mary Tarver Willis, one of the founding members of the Archaeological Association in the mid-1980s, said Newman was a "crackerjack, dependable person."

Helen Gradis, a volunteer with the city's archaeological program, called Newman "a wonderful archaeologist and easy to work with. It's a great combination."

Halbirt wrote the nomination for the Archaeological Association, listing her many associations, committees and groups but also adding a surprising twist -- Newman's also a volunteer firefighter for St. Johns County's Station 18.

Newman sifted a lot of earth this week examining material taken from a large shell mound in Volusia County.

The mound had been eroding into the St. Johns River and had just been stabilized, but some of it had to be removed.

"We're sifting through that and seeing what's in it," she said. "So far, we've found faunal remains, turtle, deer, birds and snail shells. It's prehistoric dirt."





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Story Source: St. Augustine Record

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Tunisia; Archeology

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