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News Call for Papers Eastern States Archaeological Federation will hold it's annual meeting November 5-7, 2009. This years meeting will be hosted by the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology. The location is the Holiday Inn, 250 Market St., Johnstown, PA 15901. For reservations, please call 1-814-535-7777 Special events will include Thursday tours of the Johnstown Flood Museum and the Flight 93 Memorial Site
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Members List:
Links Section
Archaeologists:
Andrew Myers
:
Malinda Myers
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Overview
Allegheny Archaeological Research is an organization made up of professionally trained archaeologists with a wide array of talents and interests. These individuals are graduates of the Pennsylvania State University and Radford University respectively and have worked throughout the eastern and midwestern United States on a number of cultural resource management (CRM) and research based archaeology projects. They have also worked on a number of private research based archaeological investigations in Pennsylvania and Virginia.
This website attempts to share with members of the archaeological community and interested individuals archaeological data gathered from a region where little fieldwork has ever been conducted much less reported. Most of the papers are works in progress and will continually change until reaching a completed stage. Questions and comments are encouraged.
During the past several years the team at Allegheny Archaeology has conducted research at a number of prehistoric sites in a region that includes but is not limited to the central and upper Allegheny River basin and the West Branch of the Susquehanna River.
Since 1998 research has focused primarily on a grouping of sites located in Forest County, Pennsylvania. One site known as Indian Camp Run No. 1 has produced some of the only known buried Paleoindian deposits found in the entire Allegheny River valley of western Pennsylvania. Some of the Paleoindian tools found at the site could be as old as 10,600 radio carbon years B.P. One whole fluted projectile recovered (see photo above) was viewed by Dr. Christopher Ellis of the University of Western Ontario in London who suggested that if the projectile had been found in Ontario he would not hesitate to call it a Barnes, a projectile point/knife (PP/K) form diagnostic of the Parkhill Complex that dates to around 8,600 B.C. A paper documenting the proposed Paleoindian assemblage is now available at this website. See "Paleoindian Research in Western Pennsylvania".
In a discussion held at the 2007 Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology meeting in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a leading Geomorphologist-Soil Scientist, who has examined the site statigraphy, called the site the oldest known prehistoric site on the floodplain of the Allegheny River.
Archaeological investigations at the Indian Camp Run sites are now complete. Both sites were excavated to nearly 100% of the known site area. A great deal of information was gathered and the first major publication is ready to appear in the fall of 2007.
Recent Geoarchaeological Investigations in Western Pennsylvania have Produced Evidence of Early Occupations
Deeply buried tools from a site located along the Allegheny River. Paleo or not?
The photo above shows three of the deepest artifacts recovered from a site located along the Allegheny River in Forest County, Pennsylvania. Artifacts have been recovered to depths as great as Level 15 (140 to 150 cm BGS). The artifact on the left is a classic notch or concave scraper which is a common artifact in all Paleoindian phases (Gramly 1992). This unifacial tool has one well defined concavity and a second smaller concavity (double notch)on the same lateral margin. The lateral margin also appears to have been worked in places. The opposite margin was used as a back to hold the tool. Notches may have been used to plane shafts (Gramly 1992:39). The biface in the center of the photo is a large Lanceolate knife like form manufactured from local siltstone. The tool clearly exhibits a haft region and appear to have been heat treated on the distal end. The choice of a low grade lithic material is indicative of the lack of chert found in the immediate vicinity of the site. The point measures 73.1 mm in maximum length and 27.58 mm in maximum width near the juncture of the blade and haft region. At the proximal end, the base measures 14.11 mm in maximum width. Maximum thickness is 7.05 mm and was recorded at the medial region, blade/haft juncture. The artifact on the right is a flake thumbnail cutting tool and represents the deepest tool found to date at the site.
The depth at which these artifacts were recovered makes a case for an age of Paleoindian or Early Archaic. The, three tools when averaged, were found some 50 cm below a possible Brewerton Corner Notched projectile and some 80 cm below a Terminal Archaic component.
The notch is clearly a Paleoindian tool and was found just above the large biface and the flake tool. The large biface is perhaps non-diagnostic and could simply be called an expediency tool, a knife. It does however share certian affinities with Paleoindian points including Clovis as well as some pre-Paleo forms. The thin flake cutting tool, while found at a great depth, offers little clues as to it's makers origins. It could be Paleoindian but it could also be later in age. Additional research conducted at the site in the near future will hopefully resolve some of these questions
If anybody has any comments/observations concerning these tools please feel free to contact me at: ammajm@key-net.net
References
Gramly, R.M.
1992 Guide to the Palaeo-Indian Artifacts of North America. Persimmon Press, Buffalo, NY.
Paleoindian Implements from Two Sites Located in Elk County, PA.
The photos below show the obverse and reverse views of two Paleoindian points and point fragments. The artifact on left is a basal fragment of a bi-fluted jasper Clovis like pp/k found in 1969 at the Mohan Run Rockshelter (36El14). The artifact on the right is a mildly fluted (Onondaga chert) Late Paleo-Indian pp/k found in 1970 at the base of the bridge (north side below the terrace) at confluence of Toby Creek and Clarion River at site (36EL12). Both artifacts were found by James T. Herbstritt and are now in the State Museum Archaeology Repository (J. Herbstritt pers.comm.2009)
Paleoindian tools found in Elk County, PA. Both tools date to a time period from around 9000 to 8000 B.C. and represent the remains in the form of tools of some of Elk County's earliest inhabitants.
Both tool types are typical of the Paleoindian period with a general lanceolate shape, basal ears, and a fluted or thinned haft region. The pp/k (projectile point/knife form on the right) appears to exhibit a fluting nipple located within the basal concavity
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