This week, we continue our celebration
of the 50th anniversary of the opening of The State Museum of
Pennsylvania in 1965. The 1960’s were a vibrant time in Pennsylvania. The
building of the State Museum and Archives Complex was creating a show case for
Pennsylvania archaeology. The SPA was active in several field projects in the
Delaware, Susquehanna and Upper Ohio drainage basins. This week we are going to
focus on one of most significant projects of the decade conducted in
Pennsylvania.
The Tocks Island Reservoir project was
an eight year investigation of the archaeological resources that may have been
impacted by construction of the Tocks Island Dam and Impoundment area. The
project area extended for 37 miles along the floodplain of the river from the
Delaware Water Gap in Monroe County, Pennsylvania to Port Jervis, New York.
(map) Significant flooding in 1955 had resulted in loss of life and considerable damage to property. In addition, there was a desire to provide a recreation
area for the major cities of the Northeast. The archaeology was funded by the National
Park Service (NPS) who was responsible at that time for protecting
archaeological sites threatened by federal projects. John Cotter was the
administrator for the Park Service and arranged for two small grants to conduct
the work; one to Franklin and Marshall College supervised by W. Fred Kinsey to
survey the Pennsylvania side of the river and one to The State Museum of New Jersey,
supervised by Herbert Kraft to survey the New Jersey side. At the time W. Fred
Kinsey, former State Archaeologist and Director of the State Museum, had moved
to the North Museum at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster. The project
began in 1964 with survey work by Kinsey, Barry C. Kent and John Hall. Kent
moved into the position of State Archaeologist at the State Museum of
Pennsylvania in 1966.
Fieldwork was conducted over an eight
week period that summer. They were assisted by an enthusiastic group of amateur
informants and members of the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology, Forks of
the Delaware Chapter. In addition, David Werner and crew from the Lenape
Chapter of the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology had been excavating the
Zimmerman site since 1962 and would continue until 1967. Forty-nine sites were
mapped and twenty were field tested employing surface collecting and trenching.
By the end of the survey, it was realized that the floodplains contained a high
density of stratified prehistoric components, varying from a few feet to over
ten feet in depth. Kinsey and Kent noted in their 1965 field report that they
had documented occupations dating between the Paleoindian and historic periods
with Late Archaic through Late Woodland components being the most common.
In 1965, Kinsey received additional
funding for field testing from the NPS but also received a National Science Foundation
grant for teaching high school students scientific methods. Kinsey created
three crews, each consisting of four high school students, one college student
and one professional archaeologist. Six sites were intensively tested over an
eight week period. It became clear that these sites were artifact rich and
included undisturbed living floors consisting of numerous pit features and post
molds. A variety of interesting artifacts were recovered including several
large sections of Woodland ceramic vessels. Only one partial house pattern was
recorded. Considering the common occurrence of houses in the Susquehanna and
Upper Ohio valleys, it was curious that few had been documented in the
Delaware.
In 1966, Kinsey decided to focus on one
site, Peters Albrecht, in order to expose a large amount of surface area in a
search for house patterns. He continued to encounter large numbers of pit
features and post molds but the post molds seemed to be randomly distributed
and did not form obviously patterns. Several large fire-cracked-rock features
were discovered however, one measuring 28 feet in diameter. These dated to the
Transitional period and Kinsey speculated they were used for drying shad caught
in the Delaware River. This speculation as to the function of these features
continues to this day.
Charles McNett joined the project that
year and brought a field crew from Baylor University near Waco, Texas. He
worked on the Brodhead-Heller site that contained well stratified Late Archaic
through Transitional period occupations that also produced large fire cracked
rock features. In addition, Perkiomen Broadspears were common but Lehigh and
Susquehanna Broadspears were also present. Netsinkers were recovered at this
site and other Transitional occupations indicating that nets were used for
catching fish. McNett continued working the site in 1967 and excavated a total
of 2100 square feet to a depth of between 24 and 84 inches.
Kinsey began the excavation of the
Faucett Site in 1967. This site contained significant Early, Middle and Late
Woodland components and was culturally stratified to a depth of over 80 inches.
Again, the Late Woodland period did not produce any houses. However, several
pits contained distinctive pottery types and his student , Roger Moeller was
able to demonstrate the contemporaneity of some of these types by cross-mending
sherds between pits.
The Middle Woodland period was very
poorly known throughout Pennsylvania (and still is) but Kinsey and his students
were able to identify a group of artifacts from this period that he used to defined
as the Bushkill Complex. Excavations at the Faucett (36Pi13A) and the Brodhead
(36Pi30) sites revealed a variety of artifacts, pottery and projectile point
types from this period. The pottery was impressed on the outer surface with
nets or fabric, and a large section of a net marked pot was found at the
Brodhead site. At Faucett, a circular pattern of post molds indicated the
presence of a Middle Woodland house.
Interestingly, several groups of bola stones were found at the Faucett
site. These are baseball-size, river
cobbles with a groove pecked around the middle. It is assumed that these were
used for hunting waterfowl along the river.
Kinsey spent three more seasons at
Faucett, eventually opening 40,000 square feet, much to a depth of the Late Archaic
occupation at approximately 84 inches. The Faucett site was the most productive
of the sites he investigated because it contained many Late Woodland features
that produced artifacts reflecting behavior during that period but also a
seemingly complete record of Late Archaic, Transitional, Early and Middle
Woodland occupations. At Faucett, he was able expose large living surfaces to
fully explore individual occupations.
The contribution of Kinsey’s work along
with his colleagues and students is in the form of establishing a basic data
base on the nature of human occupations in the Upper Delaware Valley over mainly
the past 6000 years. Using over twenty radio-carbon dates, Kinsey was able to
create a culture history of the region and identify diagnostic projectile
points and pottery types. This sequence remains a corner stone of research in
the region today. Along with Herbert Kraft, David Werner and Patrician
Marchiando, Kinsey published the results of investigations on both the New
Jersey and Pennsylvanian sides of the river in 1972.
The Upper Delaware Valley has continued
to be a laboratory for the investigation of Late Archaic through Late Woodland
research issues. The Tocks Island Dam was never built but the project area was
turned into a national park and recreation area that attracts millions of
people every year. The National Park Service has continued to conduct
archaeological surveys in the region and they have added a number of upland
sites that have contributed to settlement pattern studies in the floodplains.
Most recently, Temple University has conducted excavations at the Manna site,
originally identified by Kinsey’s 1964 survey.
Finally, a significant contribution of
Kinsey’s work was that it produced a large number of well-trained students who
went on to make their own contributions to archaeology. As a personal note, I
would like to add that I started as a one of Kinsey’s high school student
trainees in 1965 and I am now celebrating 50 years in the field of archaeology.
- Kurt W. Carr
References
Kinsey,
W. Fred
1972 Archaeology
in the Upper Delaware Valley. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission,
Harrisburg.
1991 A Trip Down Memory Lane: Digging Along the
Delaware 1964 to 1974. In The People of
Minisink: Papers from the 1989 Delaware Water Gap Symposium. Edited by
David G. Orr and Douglas Campana, the National Park Service, Philadelphia.
Kinsey,
W. Fred III and Barry C. Kent
1965 The tocks Island Reservoir Survey in
Pennsylvania: A Preliminary Statement. Pennsylvania
Archaeologist 35 (3-4): 120-133.
Kraft,
Herbert C.
1975 The
Archaeology of the Tocks Island Area. Seton Hall University Museum, South
Orange, New Jersey.
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