Rain drops keep falling on my head, but that doesn’t mean we won’t continue at Fort Hunter

The 2018 field season at Fort Hunter Mansion & Park is coming to a close soon and it has been a wet one! Last year we marveled at not having a single rain day, this year is quite the opposite. It has been a terrific year for visitors, the press, social media and just general interest in our excavation. Fort Hunter Day was one of those rare beautiful days when everyone was eager to get outside and enjoy the sunshine as demonstrated by the more than 3,000 visitors at the site.   We welcome everyone to visit and observe our excavation but especially, to ask questions.

Some of our visitors have been following us and our progress every September and early October since 2006 so they know the routine.  Others are visiting for the first time and are new to the archaeological process. Most of our visitors stand off to the side, a little unsure whether to come closer. Once they see that we’re just harmless, crazy archaeologists, the exchanges between visitors and staff demonstrate that there is an increasing interest in archaeology and our heritage in central Pennsylvania.

As with any job, once you have done something for a while you take for granted the process and begin to overlook some of the minutia of the task. You complete the process without really thinking about how or why you do things a certain way.  For an individual who has never visited an archaeological site or had an opportunity to observe the process, it can be confusing and perhaps a bit overwhelming. This is the challenge of public archaeology; make it understandable and relative to the general public.  So, some of the questions that our visitors ask may seem insignificant to us but are obviously important to their understanding of archaeology.  This blog will address some of the questions we’ve received and hopefully some of our followers have had these or similar questions of their own that will be answered.

PHMC archaeologist Janet Johnson speaks with visitors to the site during Fort Hunter Day.

(Photo: PHMC, Section of Archaeology)

Probably the most common question- what are you looking for?

Our immediate response is something to the effect of “We’re archaeologists with The State Museum of Pennsylvania and are looking for evidence of the French & Indian War period fort that stood here between 1755 and 1763.” It’s true we began this project in 2006 with hopes of finding a stockade trench and a blockhouse described in historic documents. However, while this was and is our ideal, the search goes far beyond the French and Indian War period.  Fort Hunter Mansion and Park has been used for thousands of years and we are literally peeling back the soil to discover the lives of the Indians, colonists, industrialist, farmer and businessman who left their trace.

Why are you digging here?

The initial area of excavation was prompted by ground penetrating radar that indicated areas of ground disturbance that seemed most promising. The discovery of a feature interpreted as the bake oven in 2006 was facilitated by that technology. Subsequent investigations were based on soil changes and trenching that provided a window into activity areas for which we later explored.  Our investigation is also guided by the archaeological evidence recovered in previous excavations, the artifacts and features. Artifacts are the tangible evidence of the past- their presence in undisturbed soils, as identified stratigraphically, is priceless.  So when asked, “Why don’t you dig down on the bank, closer to the river and Fishing Creek?” the answer is all about the stratigraphy and that undisturbed soil.

As stated earlier, lots of people have lived on this piece of ground and all of them have dug in the dirt, had campfires, disturbed soils and left their “mark” or presence on the landscape. It is all this activity that is challenging to sort through and identify the intact soils and the undisturbed stratigraphy. This year, we have uncovered an undisturbed living floor that dates to the Woodland period, 1000- 2900 years ago.  Significant not only for its integrity as an intact soil package but also for the picture of the past provided. Envision Indians sitting around a campfire cooking fish or game recently caught while they sharpen their projectile points (arrowheads) and polish a stone axe.  Our evidence of this picture comes in the form of lithic flakes, fire-cracked rock, broken pottery and a stone axe- tangible evidence of the past.

This drawing depicts indigenous people sitting by a camp fire.

(Drawing: Jonathan Frazier)

Another frequently asked question “What are those colored pins in the ground- the red and blue things?”  The soil markers designate stratigraphy- soil layers- within our excavation unit. Red pins define natural soil changes while the blue pins designate incremental soil levels of .25/10ths or 3 inches. Archaeology is a destructive process and it is only through careful excavation that we can examine the soils and identify anomalies we refer to as features. Features are activities that leave evidence in the soil- a cooking hearth is a feature identified by charcoal flecks and fire cracked and reddened rocks. 

The red pins define a natural soil change in the wall of this excavation unit

(photo: PHMC, Section of Archaeology)

What happens to the dirt that you dig out?

Dirt is screened through quarter inch mesh to identify artifacts that may have not been recovered during excavation. This process can be time consuming but is so very important to ensure that we don’t overlook artifacts or indicators of activities. The backdirt piles (sifted soil piles under the screen) are eventually used by the grounds crew at Fort Hunter to fill in the excavation units.

Staff and volunteers screen dirt through 1/4" wire mesh at Fort Hunter.

(Photo: PHMC, Section of Archaeology)

What happens when you stop digging for this year?

The units (5x5 square) that we have opened are covered over with a heavy black plastic. The grounds crew at Fort Hunter will use soil from the back dirt pile to fill in the open units and the black plastic is a marker for us should we wish to return to a unit the following year.

Where do the artifacts go?

The artifacts go to the archaeology lab of the State Museum for processing which involves washing, labeling, and identification.  Research and analysis of all the artifacts is conducted over the winter and spring prior to permanent curation. Conservation treatment is preserved on the most fragile or corroded of the artifacts. Specialized treatment aids in the preservation of these artifacts and ensures stability for many years to come.

What do you do if it rains?

This record-breaking year of wet weather has taken a toll on excavations and a frequent question has to do with how we deal with bad weather. We are able to continue excavations if the rain is light, but any periods longer than a few minutes create a muddy mess that is more likely to damage features. We screen the soil in our buckets, bag any artifacts and cover the units with plastic to preserve the exposed floor. The next day we bail out water from the top of the plastic and then carefully remove the plastic to see if we were successful in our endeavors to save the units from damage.  

Water from overnight rain sits atop the black plastic used to cover excavation units.

(Photo: PHMC, Section of Archaeology)

What have you found? What’s the most interesting thing you’ve found here?

We have found many artifacts that represent the activities of Fort Hunter and several of them provide interesting stories of the residents of this site.  No one object tells the story of Fort Hunter so there is not an easy answer as to the most interesting or important artifact. This year’s recovery of a stone axe will be a highlight since these are rare discoveries during excavation.  The volume of musket balls and swan shot are of particular interest and further analysis will look for density of these materials this year as compared to other years and locations.

A full grooved stone axe recovered during 2018 excavations at Fort Hunter.

(Photo: Don Giles)

This historic reference to supplies issued in December of 1755 references Swan Shot and the delivery of twenty-five pounds to the site. There are spent (used) and unused shot present in the excavations adjacent to the summer kitchen at the rear of the mansion.

“Decem^r 9 [1755], By Thomas Forster Esq^r & Thos McKee, at Hunter’s Fort,                                                                                                                                              12 ½ lb. Powder and 25 lb Swan Shot

An intriguing feature has appeared in the excavation block that has created a lot of questions and speculation by our team. A linear ditch or trench approximately a foot wide was exposed that runs through at least two of the units. The depth of this feature is being investigated and careful screening of the artifacts conducted. Unfortunately no artifacts have been recovered in this feature that provide a solid date of its construction or indicate its purpose.  Reference to the ditch at Hunter’s is made in the following;

PA Archives, Vol. III, page 442 – Engineer Rich’d Dudgeon to Gov. Denny, Carlisle , 7^th July, 1758

“Pursuant to an Order Received from Gen^l Forbes, the 5^th Inst., I have been to Inspect the State of Fort Hunter, & am of Opinion that Stockading of it, & Opening & Deepning the Ditch, according to the Scheme left with the Commanding Officer there, will be  Gen^ls Order, is to see the Work Executed, by imploying the Country People. But as it’s apprehended he may meet with difficultys in calling this assistance, I am desired by the Gen^l to signify this to you.”

Further investigation of the linear feature is necessary to understand it’s use and time period of construction, but for now we are happy to explore the possibility that this may be a portion of the ditch referenced above.

The lighter colored soil running across the units near the top of the photo indicates a yet unexplored linear feature. (Photo: PHMC, Section of Archaeology)

We only have a week left for the 2018 field season; our last day is October 5^th .  With a forecast of a dry weekend we can only hope that the trend will continue into next week and we’ll be able to explore these questions and others before the plastic goes on and we let the site rest until next September. We hope you will find the time to visit us and observe the process of discovering the archaeological heritage of Fort Hunter Mansion & Park, Dauphin County. We encourage you to continue to check the blog for updates on the analysis of the artifacts and data throughout the winter months as we explore the story of this important site.

One last question that visitors ask- What are your jobs or tasks when you go back to the office?

The analysis and processing of the artifacts is only a portion of our jobs as we curate over 9 million artifacts from across the Commonwealth. We also conduct a major outreach program at the Pennsylvania Farm Show in January. There is an exhibit to design, brochure to develop and print and labels to prepare for artifacts on display during this event. Our most immediate attention will focus on preparing for the Workshops in Archaeology program on October 27^th. This one day event will focus on the Susquehannock Indians who lived along the river and interacted with Captain John Smith in the Chesapeake Bay in 1608. The story of their tribe as seen from an archaeological perspective and through their artifacts is fascinating.  We invite you to check out the registration information and program information for 2018 Workshops in Archaeology.

It’s not raining today and we have school groups scheduled so it’s time to dig! Hopefully you’ll stop by to see our progress and ask a few of your own questions. 

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

Keystone Internship draws to a close

This week we're taking a pause from our county by county archaeological tour of Pennsylvania to spotlight the Section of Archaeology's Keystone Intern this summer, Jennifer Webb.

My name is Jennifer Webb, and I’m a Keystone Intern. (“Hi, Jenn.”) I applied for a PHMC internship in archaeology and GIS at the tail end of my junior year at Kutztown University, where I major in history and anthropology. When I received a callback from Janet Johnson, I was surprised and pleased.

My time at the PHMC is split between Noël Strattan, who supervises the Cultural Resource Geographic Information Survey (CRGIS) at the Bureau of Historic Preservation, and Janet Johnson, a curator in the Section of Archaeology at The State Museum of Pennsylvania. For Ms. Strattan, I entered and corrected CRGIS artifact data that State Museum archaeologists had catalogued over the years. My work for Ms. Johnson was a bit more varied, including data entry; cleaning, sorting and re-shelving artifact collections; scanning old archaeological journals; digging at Ephrata Cloister; assisting another intern with a lithics and projectile point typology project; and attending a meeting at Cornwall Iron Furnace.

Regarding the CRGIS, not only was the entire system being overhauled, but in many cases the State Museum and BHP had received conflicting data concerning archaeological sites. It was up to me to convert artifact information to the new system (“brick”, for example, became “architectural—ceramic”) and then resolve the differences between the data sets.

Amy Jukus, the intern coordinator, diversified my days at the PHMC by organizing several tours and field trips for the interns over the course of the summer. These included a walking tour of Harrisburg’s historic district, a special tour of the capitol building and a day trip to both Ephrata Cloister and Landis Valley. In addition, Joe Baker, a Penn DOT archaeologist, arranged a weekly seminar for Penn DOT and Keystone interns. During these seminars, we learned about cultural resource management, heard amusing anecdotes of Mr. Baker’s experiences in historic preservation, and attempted to solve problems that might arise during the course of building a bridge or widening a road. He also took us down to Washington Boro, so we could see in person what we had been working on in theory.

Most of the internship was good, of course, but there was a slight flooding problem in archaeology that occurred one evening that resulted in a massive, multi-departmental effort to move and dry boxes of artifacts. And when I say “slight flooding problem” I mean “a pipe the size of my torso ruptured”. However, it was nice to see all the other PHMC employees coming down to assist as we frantically relocated things. (Don’t worry—as far as I know, no artifacts were harmed.)

Now that I have completed my internship, I am looking forward to my senior year at college and then apply to grad school. I would like to get a master’s degree in archaeology, but I may end up going for a history degree or some other related field, depending on where I am accepted and the programs offered.

Overall, it was a deeply educational experience that I would certainly recommend to anyone interested in museum studies, cultural resource management or historic preservation. The opportunities to meet and work with professionals in the field, as well as the “extracurricular” activities that allowed us to stretch our legs, were very much worth the commute!

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

Give a Hoot, don't loot!

Archaeology is the study of past human behavior. One way archaeologists study the past is by examining locations where people worked, played and lived. These are called archaeological sites. They can consist of a few pieces of chipped stone and a broken spear point (the prehistoric equivalent of a modern deer stand) or thousands of artifacts with hearths, storage pits and burials. Large or small all sites contain information about the past. Some are more important than others but they are all part of the story about life in the past. They are like pieces of a puzzle. Unfortunately, sites are destroyed everyday by modern development and urban sprawl and pieces of the puzzle are lost forever. Archaeological sites are non-renewable resources and once lost, the knowledge they contain will never be recovered.

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) maintains a record of archaeological sites in the Commonwealth called the Pennsylvania Archaeological Site Survey (PASS) files. This is organized into a geographic information system based format. The information is used for research purposes but also to assist state and federal agencies in the management of sites that may be affected by their construction projects. Sites can be protected if they are recorded in the PASS files. The PASS files were first generated and are maintained by a group of committed individuals who enjoy the excitement of finding treasures from the past, but more importantly, are dedicated to the concept that archaeological sites are significant scientific laboratories that are essential to our understanding of the past (and managing our future).

The PHMC has been systematically recording site locations since the 1950s. Until the files were consolidated in the 1980s, the Carnegie Museum assisted in the site recording process for the western most 17 counties. Much of the information has been submitted by members of the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology, Inc and other amateur archaeologists but also interested landowners and state and federal agencies. The PASS files currently contain information on over 22,000 historic and prehistoric sites. This information has made a significant contribution to archaeological research and the protection and preservation of the Commonwealth’s archaeological heritage.

In addition to those who are interested in the scientific data, many people collect artifacts, both from the historic and prehistoric periods, as a hobby. They simply enjoy collecting and displaying artifacts. When the farm fields are freshly plowed in the spring many hobbyists are excited about getting out and collecting” arrowheads” from their favorite fields. We frequently hear stories from people about their collection of spear points that they have accumulated over the years. With fond memories they recount the hours they spent with a father or friend collecting arrowheads. However, excessive surface collecting is slowing eroding the database of our past.

Hobbyists, also, frequently trade, buy and sell artifacts. All too often, important excavation data is not included with the transfer of the artifact and unfortunately another piece of the puzzle will be lost from the scientific record. The archaeological community (both the professionals and the amateurs) have tolerated this type of activity because these hobbyists occassionally share their site locations and a small percentage of this data gets recorded. However, in the long run, the hobbyists who do not record this data with the PASS files, are doing more harm than good.

Unfortunately, in recent years, it has become increasingly common for hobbyists to dig for artifacts. Scientific archaeological excavation focuses on the three dimensional mapping of artifacts and features within natural soil horizons. It is a complicated process. An archaeological excavation is a destructive process and it is necessary to collect as much data as possible to reconstruct the natural and cultural environment under which the artifacts were deposited. It can not be learned in a weekend or even in a summer. To understand and appreciate all of the intricacies of how to excavate a site requires years of training.

The individuals who dig up artifacts are not systematically recording all the necessary information to evaluate the context. The artifacts they recover are practically worthless as scientific data. Digging for artifacts is simply looting. Even worse is the looting of artifacts on public land. This is stealing from the citizens of the Commonwealth. Under the State History Code, it is punishable by fines, imprisonment and the confiscation of all artifacts and equipment. For all citizens, the theft of our heritage can not be condoned.

We understand the excitement of finding artifacts. We urge everyone with information about sites to record site locations and artifacts with the Pennsylvania Archaeological Site Survey (PASS) files. Our web site contains information and forms on how you can begin to protect the archaeological data base of our past

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

Artifact Transfers from State Historic Sites

Brandywine Battle Field Collection,
Delaware County, PA

Revolutionary War Period:

rifle bayonet

iron cock to flint lock rifle with French flint

Two French gun flints

1/2 lb. shot with visible cast marks

Artifact collections were transferred this summer to The State Museum, Section of Archaeology from several of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) State Historic Sites. We’ve chosen to highlight objects from the Brandywine Battlefield collection in this week’s blog to spread the word that severe cuts to the Commission’s budget has led to the loss of staff, suspension of programs, and closure or transfer of visitor centers on the Pennsylvania Trails of History.

The PHMC has temporarily suspended outreach and closed public venues at four of the twenty-three State Historic Sites as of August 14th, 2009. These include the Conrad Weiser homestead exhibit buildings, all visitations at the Joseph Priestley House, The Fort Pitt Museum, and the Brandywine Battlefield Historic Park exhibit buildings. Negotiations are in process for non-profit organizations to take over visitation and public outreach programs. In the meantime, local heritage societies have ramped up fund-raising efforts to meet budgetary shortfalls at all twenty-three State Historic Sites. Please write your legislatures, join the ranks of your local heritage society, and donate to save-our-history fund-raisers. To find information about volunteering and making donations for State Historic Sites click this link to the PHMC Trails of History and explore Pennsylvania’s rich and varied past.

At the PHMC Farm Show exhibit, January 2010, we will celebrate the unique role archaeology has played in understanding and interpreting State Historic Sites.

For those of you who follow our blog and would like to view the PHMC newsletter, click here.

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

One of "history's mysteries" - Where is the "fort" at Fort Hunter

During Archaeology Month 2009, archaeologists from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) will investigate one of "history's mysteries” - where is the "fort" at Fort Hunter? Beginning on September 14, PHMC archaeologists will conduct an archaeological testing program at Fort Hunter Mansion and Park, located five miles north of the city.

The goal is to locate the remains of the French and Indian War era supply fort occupied between 1757 and 1763. This will mark the fourth season of this project and numerous fort period artifacts and features have been recovered - some of these may be part of the fort occupation. The stockade and the blockhouse, however, have yet to be located as our excavations continue.

The goals for this year’s investigation.
This year there are two main objectives. We will continue to search for the fort’s stockade line by excavating a series of trenches mainly in the yard around the mansion. Of considerable interest, is a new discovery that Jim Herbstritt made while examining aerial photographs of the property. He noticed several patches of grass across Front Street and east of the barn that appeared to be different in color and contrast than that of the surrounding vegetation.

The anomaly seems to outline an L-shaped area about 100 feet by 100 feet long reminiscent of a buried foundation wall or some other architecturally related feature. There are no known records of buildings on this part of the Fort Hunter Park property therefore we are speculating that it possibly marks the location of the former “old barracks”. Several trenches will be placed across this feature to determine its identity, function and age.


The second area of interest this season will be the north side yard of the mansion where a waterwell was discovered last year. It is stone lined and located adjacent to the 1805 ice house. Again, there are no historic maps of the well’s existence and its placement suggests that it is older than the ice house and therefore dates earlier than 1805. The top of the well contains 19th century artifacts but the bottom could contain very important artifacts from the fort period occupation.

Excavating a waterwell is a complicated undertaking that may require several seasons to complete. This year we hope is to resolve the chronological relationship between the well and the ice house. We will also excavate the soils surrounding the well down to a depth of three feet which will provide a better idea as to the nature of the well’s construction. The 2008 excavations revealed that the upper 12 inches of the site’s stratigraphy contain prehistoric materials as old as 9,000 years and these need to be archaeologically recovered prior to the well’s excavation.

Come visit us.
Our project is part of Pennsylvania’s “Archaeology Month” celebration in September and October. The excavations are open to the public, weekdays from 9:00 am until 4:00 pm, weather permitting. For more information on Fort Hunter or the archaeology of the Susquehanna Valley, visit PAarchaeology.state.pa.us or the Hall of Anthropology and Archaeology at The State Museum of Pennsylvania .

Summer 2009 Internship Section of Archaeology

My name is Thomas Wambach and I am an Anthropology/Archaeology major at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), about to enter my junior year. This summer, I participated in an internship with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC), Archaeology Section located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I received this internship via the Diversity Internship Program, whose goal is to increase staff cultural diversity in Pennsylvania’s museums and cultural organizations. As I am of Haitian American ancestry, I found the program to be captivating as well as a worthwhile experience. It certainly has increased my knowledge of archaeology outside the classroom by helping me learn in a professional environment, under a well qualified mentor in my field.

As an intern in the Archaeology Section, I accomplished a number of personal and professional goals, and worked on a variety of different tasks and projects. My main project of focus during the internship was the processing of a collection of artifacts from an archaeological site in Clinton County, Pennsylvania known as the West Water Street Site (36 CN 175), located in Lock Haven, and excavated in 1992 by students from the University of Delaware. This was a stratified prehistoric site spanning nearly the entire time span of human occupation of the Susquehanna Valley. The artifacts I worked with dated to the Pre-Middle Archaic, Middle Archaic, and Late Woodland periods of human occupation in Pennsylvania. The first project task involved using printed records of the site’s artifacts, provided by the University of Delaware, to reenter data on artifacts spanning the first section of archaeological excavation at the West Water Street Site into an electronic database. An electronic database was unavailable from the University of Delaware for various reasons.

Once this section of the database was reentered and using a printed spreadsheet of the artifacts’ locations, I began to pull artifacts, by catalog number, from their original “pizza box” shaped cardboard boxes in one of the collection holding rooms occupied by the Section of Archaeology so that I could re-house these artifacts. That is to say, I pulled artifacts with catalog numbers 1200, 1400, 1500 etc, and re-housed them with their correct provenience information in larger acid free cardboard boxes. This encompassed a majority of the work I accomplished with the West Water Street Project, and represented a continuation of work performed by previous interns in the Section of Archaeology. The project was initially difficult, because many of the artifacts were scattered among a multitude of boxes in no particular order. Hence, finding the correct artifact was not only tedious, but also presented the possibility that certain artifacts might be missing from their original box. Overall, I estimate that more than four hundred bone, stone, ceramic, and FCR (fire cracked rock) artifacts were pulled and re-housed during my time here.


My time with the Section of Archaeology, however, was not simply limited to this activity. I also attended intern seminars held every Friday by Penn DOT’s Bureau of Design, Cultural Resources Section’s own Mr. Joe Baker. These seminars were organized and designed in a manner similar to a class lecture and discussion course to teach interns valuable lessons on historical preservation in Pennsylvania and the rest of the country, especially by introducing the rules and regulation of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act.

Other additional duties included the re-housing of artifacts outside my specific major project activity, and checking climate controls (temperature and humidity) in all artifact collection rooms. During the latter activity, I discovered that dehumidifiers are fickle little machines! I also briefly participated in field work at an archaeological site near Millersville, which was a good way for me to review the excavation and field training skills I’d learned during the summer of 2008 during IUP’s field school course. Moreover, from time to time, I assisted staff in maintaining the museum exhibits and galleries in the State Museum and Archives areas. This activity allowed me to visit the museum, that I had frequented as a child. I also attended an archaeology conference that took place in Harrisburg and I learned, first hand, how the museum receives new artifacts from public and private institutions, as well as donors from across the Commonwealth.

My summer internship also provided me the opportunity to show off my skills as an artist by drawing a reconstructed stone core artifact for one of my colleagues. I certainly hope the sketch proves useful in the future. I also took part in field trips to other museums in the state and to sites under protection by the National Register of Historic Places to evaluate their techniques of reaching the public as well as in artifact and site preservation, all the while comparing my observations with those services provided by the State Museum. In addition, I took part in a small public outreach activity by answering a letter sent by someone who had special interest in local archaeology. I provided the client with resourceful online and book sources so that his research could be completed. Despite the fact that the client was writing from prison, the effort demonstrates that archaeology is for everyone, and that we [archaeologists] are humble public servants.

Most importantly, I established contacts and friendships with the staff here in the PHMC, which I hope will help me in the future. My time here was very educational, fun, and an otherwise memorable experience that I will value greatly. I recommend contacting, interning, or communicating with the PHMC to anyone who is studying archaeology, like me, or to those who are interested in archaeology and/or prehistoric and historical preservation. It certainly proved to be an integral and priceless education and experience for me!
Thank you to all my friends and staff from the PHMC!

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

Experimental Archaeology at the Historical and Museum Commission - Building a Dugout Canoe

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) has carved three dugout canoes over the past decade. These have been done as public programs using replicated historic and/or prehistoric tools. The sight of people sometimes dressed in loin cloths, wood chips flying and fire attracts a lot of attention and these programs have been very popular with the public. The resulting dugouts have been included in a variety of presentations, most notably, the annual Pennsylvania Farm Show. Although the publicity is good, these projects are examples of experimental archaeology. They are being conducted to aid in the interpretation of the archaeological record.

As a simple definition, a dugout canoe or, simply, a “dugout” is a hollowed-out log used as a watercraft. It is typically made in a cycle of burning and cutting that includes repeatedly burning the log with a controlled fire and then scraping and chopping out the charred and softened wood with a variety of tools that can be as diverse as shells, wooden scraping tools and stone adzes.

The dugout is likely the earliest form of constructed watercraft in the world, and specimens in Europe have been dated to over 9,000 years old. Considering that humans voyaged to Australia at least 50,000 years ago, dugouts are probably at least that old. In North and South America, dugouts have been the main form of water travel since Native Americans arrived from Siberia over 16,000 years ago. In addition, there has been recent speculation that these early people first arrived by boat. The Northwest Coast seems to have the greatest variety of dugouts with some of these being very large and elaborately designed. In Eastern North American, dugouts are preserved in the lakes and bogs of Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The oldest of these date to over 6,000 years before the present.

During our 2005 project, we only used tools that were available to the prehistoric inhabitants of the Commonwealth. It has frequently been assumed by archaeologists that stone adzes were a common tool in dugout construction. The stone adzes were made by grinding down basalt into the desired shape. This was time consuming but attaching them to handles was the real challenge. Several handles and one adze were broken but eventually we developed a design that worked very well. Once the dugout was completed, the wear patterns on the stone adzes were analyzed and compared to archaeological specimens. Surprisingly, the wear patterns on the experimental specimens were not the same as most of the archaeological specimens. Our conclusion was that adzes were not commonly used in dugout construction. For more information on dugouts, visit our Building a Dugout page.

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

Quaker Hills Quarry (36La1100)

After six field seasons the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission’s (PHMC) Section of Archaeology ended excavations at the Quaker Hills Quarry (36LA1100) Site, a four acre size Shenks Ferry village located in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The property is transitioning from a corn and bean field to a high density residential development replete with efficient condominium size homes, lawns and paved drives. In compliance with the Pennsylvania State History Code the PHMC undertook a multi-season archaeological study at 36LA1100. The work involved a detailed surface evaluation of prehistoric resources and a broad scale data recovery within the proposed development. The endeavor provided us with a glimpse of prehistoric Indian life at the dawn of history.

With the assistance of Temple University staff and students, PHMC exposed, mapped and selectively excavated more than 50% of the village site. The results provided sufficient information to determine site size, arrangement of living structures and related pit features, and other salient information about terminal Funk Phase Period subsistence and mortuary practices.

How Old is the Village?
Archaeologists place the Shenks Ferry Culture (circa 1250-1550 A.D.) into the Late Woodland Period. This three hundred year range of time was principally determined by radiocarbon dating charcoal and organic residues found in association with certain artifact types at Shenks Ferry sites in the Susquehanna Valley. The age of Funk Phase sites (the latest phase of Shenks Ferry) tend to cluster around the mid to late 15th century with a few sites surviving well into the beginning of the 16th century.

The majority of radiocarbon dates for the Quaker Hills Quarry Site indicate an occupation period closer to the first quarter of the 16th century during a time when the New World was undergoing many changes. Archaeologists have stated that the conspicuous correlation between the disappearance of Shenks Ferry and the arrival of the Susquehannocks may indicate inter-tribal warfare and that some Shenks Ferry settlements may have actually been overrun with invading Susquehannocks. This conquest theory has met with some challenge, however, and other reasons may have, in fact, precipitated their demise.

The following images depict typical artifacts and exceptional finds recovered from 36La1100, quartz projectile points and Funk phase pottery.

For more about the Shenks Ferry Culture and the results of PHMC excavations at the Quaker Hills Quarry Site please visit the research section of the PHMC's archaeology Web site.

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