[1] He is best known for his twenty-two-year investigation of the early human occupation of the Delaware River Valley in the United States.
He emigrated in 1867 and arrived in the United States that same year, spending the rest of his life in Trenton, New Jersey.
In 1899, he began working for Frederic Ward Putnam of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology for two decades, helping to add to the collection through excavations of Trenton.
[3] Along with his colleague Charles Conrad Abbott, Volk is best known for his twenty-two year investigation of early human occupation of the Delaware Valley.
Volk analyzed glacial deposits known as the Trenton Gravels, excavating the area using a form of archaeological stratigraphy.