Staff Report
A group of investigators, funded by a television network and led by a UNM archeologist, excavated the alleged UFO crash site in Roswell in September for a documentary that will be aired Nov. 22.
William Doleman, senior archeologist at the UNM Office of Contract Archeology, said his work on the Roswell excavation is top secret and that he signed a contract with the SCI FI channel preventing him from disclosing its results.
"Our confidentiality agreement with SCI FI does not allow me to reveal project results, but I can say that OCA's project yielded some very intriguing and surprising results," Doleman said in a UNM Public Affairs press release.
The project is believed to be the first attempt to excavate physical evidence of the alien crash that alleged occurred during the summer of 1947, Doleman told University officials.
He said that the two-hour documentary will include background information and interviews of key people involved with the excavation.
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"Throughout the project, I took care to maintain my and OCA's role in the project as impassionate researchers providing archeological expertise," Doleman said in the press release. "At the same time, I remained open-mined and supportive of the first attempt that I know of to bring scientific methodology to the search for physical proof of this historically significant if controversial event."
The alleged crash, which occurred outside the small New Mexican town, has captured the public's imagination for decades. The U.S. government has said the incident was the result of a downed weather balloon while UFO hunters say it was something far more significant.
Doleman said the excavation project entailed both geophysical prospecting and archeological testing. The crew's work also included backhoe trenching of the "Furrow" allegedly created by the spacecraft that supposedly crashed and skipped, making a debris field before coming to rest at the final crash site.
He added the project used high tech testing and remote sensing technologies. The excavation lasted about ten days.
"I have been told that the show will reveal some real smoking gun evidence for the first time, however, I haven't been told what that evidence is," Doleman told University officials.
