This
Week in Pennsylvania Archaeology will focus on the Meadowood projectile point
type. This projectile point type was originally identified and defined in
central New York, primarily from cremation burials, but also found at
habitation sites. The type is named after the estate of Delos Wray at West
Rush, Monroe County, New York where the points and cache bifaces were found in
a small cemetery excavated by Charles F. Wray in 1930 (Ritchie 1969: 179).
Meadowood projectile points
The Meadowood point type is found at habitation sites associated with Vinette 1 and exterior cordmarked/interior smooth pottery. Some of these were used as projectile points, knives and scrapers. However, this type is best known from cremation burials and its association with banded slate gorgets, tubular pipes, popeyed birdstones, boatstones, copper beads shell beads and biface caches. This assemblage seems to represent a distinctive shared belief system and an associated trade and exchange system found throughout the Middle Atlantic, Eastern Great Lakes and southern New England regions.
gorgets
tubular pipe and pop-eyed birdstone
According to Ritchie (1961: 35), the Meadowood projectile point type is a thin, medium to large, side-notched point averaging 57 mm to 70 mm in length and 5 mm in thickness. The base is straight or convex and about half are ground smooth. The side-notches are small and there are a few examples of double notched specimens. Kinsey (1972: 435) found that in the Upper Delaware about half display serrated edges. The final stages of production involved careful pressure flaking. This biface form is also found un-notched as cache blades, sometimes numbering in the hundreds in cremation burials. As one of its most distinctive characteristics, the lithic material type is almost always Onondaga chert. This chert is found in western New York and the bifaces were acquired through an extensive system of trade and exchange extending hundreds of kilometers. Richie (1961: 35) dated Meadowood points to between 3000 BP and 2400 BP. Kinsey (1972: 362) dates these between 2950 BP. and 2500 BP. This biface type generally follows Fishtail points in eastern Pennsylvania and the Meadowood phase represents the beginning of the Early Woodland period.
Meadowood points are found throughout Pennsylvania although mainly in the northern sections of the main river drainages. Kinsey (1972) reported Meadowood occupations at both the Faucett (36Pi13A) and Zimmermann (36Pi14) sites in the Upper Delaware Valley where they are particularly common. They are also common on the North and Main branches of the Susquehanna river and Turnbaugh (1977) reports a concentration in the Williamsport area of the West Branch. The Meadowood phase in the Upper Ohio basin of western Pennsylvania is largely confined to the Upper Allegheny Valley and is poorly known. Other tools found at the habitation sites include scrapers, seed grinding stones, nutting stones, anvil stones, triangular end scrapers, Vinette 1 pottery and or exterior cordmarked/interior smooth wares. However, in all cases, Meadowood occupations seem to be small in area and in numbers of artifacts.
Leibhart Meadowood cache
Vinette I ceramic vessel
So, there seems to be a scattering
of fewer than 200 habitation sites in Pennsylvania, but the Meadowood phase is
best known for its exotic and cremation burials. Cemeteries are found in New
York, but few if any multiple grave sites have been found in Pennsylvania. Kraft
(2001: 166) reports a Meadowood cremation burial from Fairfield, New Jersey
that dated to 2980+130 BP., but no Meadowood burial sites have been
reported from the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware. However, in the
Susquehanna basin, at least six Meadowood caches have been identified. The
Ferry site (36Pe10) in the lower Susquehanna basin, produced a cache of 20
Meadowood bifaces and a second cache 70 meters from the first, containing over
250 cache bifaces, steatite beads, a strike-a-lite, copper beads, a group of
stemmed and side notched points, two of which could be Hellgrammite points and
cremated human remains (Gramly and Kunkle 2003). The Oscar Leibhart (36Yo9) cache included a
group of eight or nine Meadowood bifaces, two large gorgets, one with two holes
and one with three holes, a tubular pipe, a popeyed birdstone, and metarhyolite
bifaces possibly Hellgrammites (Carr and Mayhew 2017; Kent 2001: 368; Kinsey
1957). Stewart (2003: 12) reports Meadowood points from a possible cremation
burial that included red ochre and a “killed” Hellgrammite point from the
Canfield Island site (36Ly37) on the West Branch (Bressler 1989: 78; Bressler et al. 1983: 51). A boatstone and a
portion of a fireclay tube were also found. The Cremard site (36Lu58) on the
North Branch produced a possible cremation burial associated with a blocked end
tubular pipe, an incised celt/gorget, a boatstone, a metallic material,
possibly galena and a date of 2520+50 BP. (Orlandini 2008).
At least in the Middle Delaware, and
the Lower Susquehanna basins, Meadowood points seem to be contemporary with
Hellgrammite points (Hummer 2003: 46). At the Williamson site along the
Delaware river in New Jersey, Hummer dates them to 2900 BP. Hellgrammite points
also have small side-notches, but they are made from local lithic materials
rather than Onondaga chert. In addition, they are usually thicker, not well
flaked and more frequently seriated. In the Middle Delaware Valley, the
Hellgrammite type, is predominantly made of argillite (64%), followed by jasper
at 18% (Hummer 2003). In the Lower Susquehanna Valley, they are predominantly
metarhyolite. It should be noted that Hellgrammite points found in Meadowood
burials suggests that they are contemporary with one another and that the
Meadowood points are part of a trade and exchange system while the
Hellgrammites are being made of local lithic materials and represent the local
group.
Hellgramite points from 36Pe10
Metarhyolite, chert and Hellgrammite points
Initially, Meadowood points were treated
in a similar manner as other projectile point types implying that they were the
projectile point used by a specific group of people along with other tools, pottery
that included Vinette 1 and exterior cordmarked/interior smooth wares. These
defined the Meadowood culture or Meadowood phase (Kraft 2001: 160). Ritchie
(1969: 181-183) states that “Meadowood people pursued a fishing, hunting and
presumably gathering subsistence pattern” similar to Late Archaic and
Transitional times, but the “small cemeteries and storage pits point toward a
more stable pattern of living”.
However, Custer (1996: 242) notes that
“Meadowood materials are isolated occurrences of exotic materials that are
overlain on local Early Woodland cultures.” Kinsey (1972: 362) also implies
that Meadowood did not have an effect on cultural evolution in the Upper
Delaware and that it came from central New York by way of a travel/trade
process. It seems as if Meadowood was grafted on to local Early Woodland
cultural groups. Considering the way archaeologists name cultures and phases,
in the Middle Delaware and Susquehanna basins, it may be more appropriate to
identify this as the Hellgrammite phase or culture.
Recently, Karine Tache summarized
Meadowood sites over a broad area and defined the Meadowood Interaction Sphere (Tache
2011). She identified Meadowood sites that shared the
same artifact assemblages extending from the eastern Great Lakes through
Ontario and New England and into the Middle Atlantic region. Sites throughout
this region were connected by a trade system involving Onondaga chert and a
common belief system. It seems to include several different regional
archaeological constructs that seemingly represent different “cultures”. The
regional size of this shared belief system and the level of interaction is
unprecedented in the Middle Atlantic region compared to previous times.
As characterized by
Tache (2011: 72), the Meadowood Interaction Sphere consists of a directional
trading model involving Onondaga chert bifaces, native copper, banded slate
gorgets, birdstones, tubular pipes, and marine shell artifacts. Custer (1996)
suggests that the exotic items are controlled by important men dealing with
long distance trade resulting in enhanced social status. Tache (2011: 42-43)
characterizes the Onondaga chert bifaces as a commodity made by specialists.
Long known for its high-quality flaking characteristics, the material may have
acquired sociopolitical significance that was used to obtain exotic items that
enhanced the power and prestige of individuals or kin based groups. She (2011:
71) also suggests that there were degrees of participation by local groups,
some being more involved in the trade and exchange of Meadowood bifaces than
others. In addition, Tache (2011: 72) notes the differential quantity and
quality of grave goods in burials “suggesting the emergence of social
inequalities”.
Typically,
the only social distinctions thought to exist in Early Woodland groups are
headman and shaman and these could have been held by either males or females. However,
during the Meadowood/Hellgrammite phase, some groups were participating in the
Meadowood Interaction Sphere. This means that some individuals were involved
with the trade and exchange of these exotic items and achieved greater status.
These are probably the individuals in the cremation burials. However, it is
significant that the items in the burials are generally the same – a cache of
Meadowood bifaces, a gorget, a tubular object, a boat stone, a few bifaces in
local lithic material and red ochre. Therefore, it is likely that Early
Woodland social organization was more complex than during Late Archaic, but not
greatly so. How this was operationalized in the local
egalitarian bands of Pennsylvania has not been specifically determined, but is
very interesting to contemplate.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this insightful look at the past by way of
an artifact. We often remind our
followers that understanding the past is not about a single artifact; it is
what we learn from patterning the past and looking at “the big picture”. These changes in the Early Woodland period are
an interesting reflection of the changing cultural adaptation of this
little-known time.
References:
Bressler, James P.
1989 Prehistoric Man on Canfield Island: (36LY37) Lycoming County,
Pennsylvania. Presto
Print, Williamsport,
PA.
Bressler, James, P., Ricki Maietta,
and Karen Rockey
1983 Canfield Island Through the
Ages. Grit Publishing Company, Williamsport,
Pennsylvania.
Carr, Kurt W. and Melanie Mayhew
2017 Auctioning the Past:
Attempts to Preserve the Archaeological Record of the Donald
Leibhart Collection
(36Yo9). Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for
Pennsylvania
Archaeology, April 9, Harrisburg.
Custer, Jay F.
1996 Prehistoric Cultures of Eastern Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Anthropological Series Number 7,
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Gramly, R. Michael and Les Kunkle
2003 Working with Cremains: An
Example from the Ferry Site, South Central Pennsylvania.
The Amateur Archaeologist pp 43-52.
Hummer, Chris C.
2003 Hellgrammite Points and
the Early Woodland in New Jersey. Bulletin
of the
Archaeological Society of New Jersey 58: 45-48.
Kent, Barry C.
2001 Susquehanna’s Indians. Anthropological Series, (with Addendums, x-xvi)
Number 6.
Pennsylvania Historical
and Museum Commission, Harrisburg.
Kinsey, W. Fred
1957 A Susquehannock Longhouse. American Antiquity 23(2): 180-181.
1972 Archeology in the Upper Delaware
Valley: A Study of the Cultural
Chronology of the
Tocks
Island Reservoir. Anthropological Series Number 2,
Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania,
The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg.
Kraft, Herbert C.
2001 The
Lenape-Delaware Indian Heritage: 10,000 B.C. – A. D. 2000. Lenape Books, Elizabeth,
New Jersey.
Ritchie, William A.
1969 The
Archaeology of New York State, Revised Edition. Natural History Press,
Garden City.
Stewart, R. Michael
2003 A Regional Perspective on Early and Middle Woodland Prehistory in
Pennsylvania. In Foragers and Farmers of
the Early and Middle Woodland Periods in Pennsylvania, edited by Paul A.
Raber and Verna L. Cowin, pp. 1-33. Recent Research in Pennsylvania Archaeology
Number 3. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Tache, Karine
2011 Structure and Regional Diversity of the
Meadowood Interaction Sphere. Memoirs of the
Museum
of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Number 48, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Turnbaugh, William
1977 Man, Land, and Time. Lycoming County Historical Society,
Williamsport.
United
States Department of Agriculture
.
For more information, visit
PAarchaeology.state.pa.us or the Hall of Anthropology and Archaeology at
The State Museum of Pennsylvania .
