In Memorium, Fredrick Assmus January 6, 1946-October 14, 2012

This week, the letter “F” is dedicated to the memory of a true friend and advocate for Middle Atlantic Archaeology, Fred Assmus. Sharon, Fred’s loving wife and partner of thirty-three years, donated the Assmus Collection in the summer of 2013 to The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Section of Archaeology. Transported in over sixty boxes and three travel display cases, the collection embodies over fifty years of volunteer service to avocational archaeology associations in the tri-state region of Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. In 2007, Fred was recognized as the Archey Award recipient by the Society of Pennsylvania Archaeology, Inc. (SPA) for his significant lifetime contribution to the society. He remained an active chapter member of the Incorporated Orange County Chapter of the New York State Archaeology Association (IOCCNYSAA), serving as a Trustee, program chair and as Treasurer in the later years of his life after relocating to Middletown, NY.

Fred and Sharon Assmus at the 2009 IOCCNYSAA annual banquet receiving an award, image courtesy of IOCCNYSAA.

A husband and wife team, Sharon continues their legacy as a leading member in the IOCCNYSAA, acting as program chair for annual banquets, securing speakers for chapter meetings, and organizing community outreach events. She was elected to the office of correspondence secretary and has served in this position for numerous consecutive terms. Both Fred and Sharon have received many accolades for their years of service to the Orange County Chapter, and have been honored with membership in the “order of the trowel” at annual recognition events.

 

Fred’s love for natural history and prehistoric cultures began at an early age when his family moved from Brooklyn, NY to the scenic town of Milford, PA in the Delaware Water Gap. As a young boy, Fred and his brother collected fossils and prehistoric artifacts from the banks of the Delaware River and its local tributaries. Bill Leiser, a high school teacher and member of the Lenape Chapter 12 of the SPA, took the budding amateur geologist and archaeologist under his wing when Fred was in his teens. Fred joined Mr. Leiser, David Werner, Lyman Vandermark, William DeGraw and family, and other chapter members to survey and excavate sites endangered by the Tocks Island Reservoir Project throughout the 1960s and 1970s. As he came of age, Mr. Assmus served as Treasurer for the Lenape Chapter for many years.

Fred Assmus excavating at the Zimmermann site in the 1960s.

The bulk of the Assmus collection is from the Lenape Chapter’s undertakings in PikeCounty, Pennsylvania and Sussex County, New Jersey. Donated materials of significant number were received from the Zimmermann (36Pi14), Eshback (36Pi8), Snyder (Schneider- 36Pi40), Davenport (28Sx27), Minisink Island (28Sx28), Bell-Philhower/Bell-Browning (28Sx48), and Herring (28Sx428) sites. For more information regarding Lenape Chapter 12 excavations, the Werner Collection, and the Zimmermann site (36Pi14), visit our previous tribute to David Werner. We are currently processing the Assmus collection in the lab, ensuring its preservation for future research.

   

Cataloged artifacts from the Assmus collection directly link to documents from Lenape Chapter excavations donated with the Werner and DeGraw collections in 2004 and 2006 respectively. Pictured above is a fishtail point (FS No. 169)Fred recovered from the Zimmermann Site (36Pi14) and its associated records.

 A proposed rotating exhibit in the Archaeology Gallery will also highlight the contributions of the Lenape Chapter 12 excavations. It is our intention to pay further tribute to Mr. Assmus by including several of his reconstructed prehistoric vessels in honor of his interest in steatite bowl morphology and Woodland Period pottery.

 The Garoga vessel above, recovered from Sussex County, New Jersey, was a particular favorite of Mr. Assmus. An example of Iroquoian influence in the Upper Delaware Valley, its presence supports the view that the Upper Delaware was a dynamic middle ground for cultural interactions between local Algonquian cultures and neighboring Iroquois prior to and during historic contact with European settlers (Stewart, 1993). Garoga decorative motifs are ascribed cultural affiliation with proto-historic Iroquoian village sites in New York State. The type site, on which the Garoga cultural phase was defined by Ritchie (1965; Ritchie & Funk 1973), is located in the Mohawk Valley.  Pottery from the Upper Delaware Valley excavated from proto- Munsee contexts distinguishes itself from other Late Woodland Algonquian pottery found on sites in the lower Delaware Valley and coastal region. The stylistic choices of high, castellated collars and incised geometric designs—vessel morphology and decorative motifs that mimic Iroquois pottery types (Kraft, 1986: pp. 146-149; Leslie, 1973)—further suggest cross-cultural influence and interaction in the region between these two peoples of different linguistic origins.

Fred shared these interests at chapter meetings, public outreach events and archaeology conferences, generously displaying his artifacts and speaking on topics of local prehistory whenever called upon. He was a further resource to professional archaeologists and historians, contributing his knowledge and providing images of his artifacts for publications.  Amanda C. Batko, township historian at Montague, Sussex County, NJ, lists Mr. Assmus among her acknowledged mentors in her 2009 local historical account, Images of America, Montague.  The Garoga vessel pictured above as well as a Munsee incised reconstructed vessel were featured in Kraft’s 1986 publication, The Lenape (Fig. 36h,f: 150). Additional vessels and stone tools from the Assmus collection are also pictured in Kinsey (1972), Archeology in the Upper Delaware Valley). Link to our Pike County blog for more information relating to the archaeology of this collection and to see replicated figures from The Zimmermann site report (Werner 1972: 55-133). The Munsee incised rim from the Davenport site (Fig. 36.2) is part of the Assmus Collection.

Fred Assmus sharing his collection at an IOCCNYSAA function in 2008, image courtesy of IOCCNYSAA.

Fred’s warm hearted presence, enthusiasm and dedication to historic preservation are dearly missed in the archaeology community. We are proud to carry on his spirit and intent at The State Museum of Pennsylvania through the preservation and celebration of his collection and its significant contribution to our understanding of prehistoric cultures in the Upper Delaware Valley.

References:

Batko, Alicia C.

2009       Images of America, Montague. Arcadia Publishing.

Kinsey, W. Fred

1972       Archeology in the Upper Delaware Valley. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

Kraft, Herbert C.

1983      The Lenape, Archaeology, History, and Ethnography. New Jersey Historical Society.

Leslie, Vernon

1973       Faces in Clay. T. Emmett Henderson.

Ritchie, William A.

1965       The Archaeology of New York State. The Natural History Press.

Ritchie, William A. and Robert E. Funk

1973       Aboriginal Settlement Patterns in the Northeast. The New York State Museum and Science Service.

Stewart, Michael

1993       Comparison of Late Woodland Cultures: Delaware, Potomac, and Susquehanna River Valleys, Middle Atlantic Region. Archaeology of Eastern North America 21:163-178.

Werner, David J.

1972    The Zimmermann Site. In Archeology in the Upper Delaware Valley by W. Fred Kinsey. pp. 55-130, The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

For more information, visit PAarchaeology.state.pa.us or the Hall of Anthropology and Archaeology at The State Museum of Pennsylvania .

The Orient Phase

This week we will return to our alphabetical organization of archaeological topics.
“O” is for Old Copper Culture, Olduvai Gorge, Onondaga chert, Owasco, Ozette site and this week’s blog will highlight the Orient Phase. This phase dates between 2700 and 3200 years ago and is characterized by fishtail type points, large fire cracked rock features and steatite bowls. Trade and exchange in lithics such as metarhyolite, jasper and argillite and very early forms of pottery also appear in Pennsylvania. This artifact assemblage is found in Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, eastern New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland. The largest sites are frequently found along major rivers. Some of the most important sites in Pennsylvania are Faucett and Zimmermann in the Upper Delaware Valley, Sandts Eddy near Easton, Gerty’s Notch along the middle Susquehanna River and Bare Island in the lower Susquehanna Valley.

The Orient Phase was defined by William A. Ritchie (1965:164-178) based on a group of sites on Long Island, New York. These consisted of both habitation and at least four significant cemetery sites. Several of the sites were stratified and exhibited good faunal preservation. The habitation sites, such as the Stony Brook site, demonstrate a change in diet from the deeper Late Archaic occupations. The faunal remains of the earlier occupations were dominated by deer and turkey but the Orient occupations were dominated by shellfish such as oyster, bay scallop, and hard-shelled clam.

William Ritchie sitting next to a Orient Phase burial with grave offerings of steatite post at the Jamesport site, Long Island.

The diagnostic projectile point type was the Orient point. As defined by Ritchie (1961:39) this type can be characterized as a “slender, gracefully formed point, of medium size, with a characteristic narrow, lanceolate blade merging into a flaring "fishtail" stem. The artifact assemblage also included ovate knives, fishtail base drills, spear thrower weights, fully grooved axes, celts, adzes and rarely cord-marked, grit tempered pottery.

Orient points

Four cemeteries were excavated on Long Island, notably Orient No.1 and 2. These contained both single and communal cremation burials. At Orient No. 2, the burial pit was 20-30 feet across and five feet deep. The majority of the cremations were associated with caches of artifacts that included a fire-making kit, a number of projectile points, one or more stone bowls, a hammerstone and sometimes an adze or a celt. The stone bowls had lugs at each end and showed considerable variation in shape including oval, rectangular, and nearly circular. They were usually from five to eighteen inches long, and two to six inches deep. They frequently were smoke stained and grease-incrusted indicating that they had been used. The steatite bowls in the cemeteries were intentionally broken or “killed”, usually by knocking out a hole in the bottom.

steatie bowl from the Zimmermann site

In Pennsylvania, W. Fred Kinsey (1972:355-361) has provided the most detailed definition of this time period which he defines as the Fishtail Tradition. This includes many of the artifacts of the Orient Phase but Kinsey defines a second fishtail type, the Drybrook point. There are a very large number of sites along the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers where steatite bowl fragments and large fire-cracked rock features are very common, along with evidence of trade and exchange of lithics.

artifacts of the Fishtail tradition (Kinsey 1972)

This time period seems to represent a continuation of traditions that developed during the Late Archaic also known as the Transitional period. In some ways the Orient Phase and the Fishtail tradition represent a terminological conundrum. It is frequently noted that fishtail points seemed to have evolved from broadspear types, and they are frequently indistinguishable from re-sharpened Susquehanna broadspears. This would place them with Archaic cultures. However, this phase is also associated with early fired clay pottery. Since pottery is a diagnostic artifact of the Woodland period, this would place this phase in the Woodland Period.

This is the problem with defining broad time periods (i.e. PaleoIndian, Archaic, Woodland) by specific artifact types. Obviously, the people of the Archaic period did not suddenly adopt Woodland artifacts into their toolkits. This was a gradual process and archaeologists have recognized that these chronological terms are heuristic devices but we have yet to agree to alternative terminology.

Kinsey, W. Fred

1972 Archaeology in the Upper Delaware Valley. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Anthropological Series No. 2. Harrisburg.

Ritchie, William A

1961 A Typology and Nomenclature for New York Projectile Points. New York State Museum and science Service, Bulletin Number 384. Albany, New York.

1969 Archaeology of New York State. Revised Edition, Natural History Press, Garden City, New York.

For more information, visit PAarchaeology.state.pa.us or the Hall of Anthropology and Archaeology at The State Museum of Pennsylvania .