This
week we move to the northern reaches of the Allegheny drainage basin and the
glaciated Appalachian Plateau. Crawford County has a relatively high density of
sites compared to other counties and there have been a number of significant
excavations. In western Pennsylvania there are a variety of different chert
sources that were used prehistorically and this material supplies 71% of the
toolstone used in the county. In addition, Onondaga chert was commonly used in
the Upper Allegheny basin and contributes 13% of the raw material for stone
tools. The source for this material is the Onondaga chert quarries near
Batavia, New York. Cobbles of this material were transported south by the
glaciers from western New York. The high quality of
Onondaga chert made it highly desirable and pebbles were even used by creating bipolar
cores. Surprisingly, metarhyolite from the South Mountain region (a distance of
300 km or 180 miles) is also present.
Much of the county was covered by
glaciers up to about 14,000 years ago and the retreating ice formed many lakes.
These lakes have yielded the remains of Pleistocene megafauna and several
mammoth elephant sites have been recorded. Scuba divers initially located the
remains and brought them to the surface. A few samples were properly conserved
but the bone and ivory that was not, quickly dried out and all but
disintegrated. A more detailed examination of the sites revealed that the
skeletons were disarticulated and badly crushed, probably by ice.
Image of artifacts from the Lawson Mound
One of the earliest reports in the Pennsylvania Archaeologist concerning the
archaeology of Crawford County was by Edmund Carpenter (1950). He briefly
reported on six burial mounds in Crawford and Erie counties. They were all very
similar in size and construction consisting of earth and boulders or just
boulders. The Lawson Mound measured approximately thirty-two feet in diameter
and approximately four feet high although it had been leveled by farming
activities. It contained a cache of 8 chert projectile points and a double-bitted
celt made of slate. The Nelson Mound (36Cw58) was excavated by Harry Schoff
(Carpenter and Schoff 1951). This
contained two burials in separate stone cists and the remains of one was
cremated. The cremated burial contained a red ochre stained cache of eleven
Flint Ridge Chalcedony blades. A lump of graphite and a gray mass of what was
once “probably powered graphite that had solidified and now showed the shape
and folds of the pouch that once encased it” was also recovered. Nine of the
blades were re-fitted and illustrated the shape of the original core. The
second burial was flexed and consisted of “badly decayed” skull fragments,
teeth and long bones. It was associated with two large sheets of muscovite, a
crude slate pendant and a piece of red ochre.
Image of artifacts from the Nelson Mound
Diagram of the Danner Mound
Finally, the Danner Mound (36Cw4) was
excavated by Neil Clark, Stan Lantz and Bill Robinson with assistance from the
Eriez Chapter of the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology. The remains of three burials were recovered
although there were indications that others were present but had completely
disintegrated. Grave goods consisted of
copper crescents and beads, a polished slate gorget, a celt and two undrilled
pendants. These mounds all date to the Squawkie Hill phase of the Middle
Woodland period (1850 BP. -1550 BP.). The
people who built these mounds seem to be trading with the Hopewell culture (or
Interaction Sphere) to the west but not much is known concerning their
habitation site.
Image of McFate site map
The McFate site (36Cw1) is arguably one
of the most significant sites excavated in the county (see also the Wilson
Shutes site (36Cw5), another significant McFate phase excavation from Crawford
County). This site was excavated by Harry Schoff in 1938 as part of the Works
Projects Administration (WPA) initiative and sponsored by the Pennsylvania Historical
Commission. The site is situated on the floodplain of French Creek, adjacent to
the Nelson Mound (but unrelated). It is actually three overlapping villages –
Village 1 with three palisades, Village 2 and 3 with double palisades. Schoff
carefully mapped the palisades, houses, burials and 448 storage/processing
pits. Between 1966 and 1972, the Cussewago Chapter of the Society of
Pennsylvania Archaeology, led by Frederick E. Brown conducted additional
excavations at the site, exposing Village 3.
Village 1 is 120 by 197 feet in
diameter. A trench was created on the inside of the inner palisade and the
earth was used to support the palisade posts.
The village contained circular houses averaging 19 feet in diameter. There
were also several storage/processing pits. Semi-detached, post-lined,
semi-subterranean storage structures were found with many of the houses.
Image
of McFate house
Schoff recorded the contents of each of
the pits. Many contained well preserved organic materials such as bone, corn
cobs, nut shells, grass pit linings, a fragment of a fiber net (link to blog 6/24/11) and a charred
cord wrapped paddle for shaping pottery. The latter is the only example known
from the Eastern United States (Burkett et
al. 1997). The most common tools are triangular projectile points, pitted
stones, hammerstones, bone and antler chisels and celts. Surprisingly, flakes
from the production of stone tools were not common and it would seem that stone
tool production did not take place near the pits. Considering all of the posts
that were made for the palisade, houses, drying racks and storage structures,
wood working tools were common. Along with the celts listed above, beaver
incisor chisels were also found. Trumpet shaped smoking pipes are also common
at McFate and other sites that contain McFate Incised pottery.
Image
of cord wrapped paddle
Image
of Trumpet-pipes
The pottery from the McFate site has
been classified into three types suggesting the three villages were occupied
over a period of at least two hundred years. The latest type was defined by
William Mayer-Oakes (1955) based on the ceramics from this site and is called
McFate Incised. This is a shell tempered ceramic with incised line motifs of
opposing triangles filled with parallel horizontal lines set off by parallel
oblique lines on medium to high collars. This pottery is concentrated in the
Upper Allegheny (link to blog 6/8/12)
but also in the Lower Allegheny basin associated with Monongahela sites. McFate
pottery is believed to represent an Iroquoian culture that migrated into southwestern
New York and northwest Pennsylvania. By AD 1550, it seems to
disappear and the region is abandoned by Native Americans as a habitation area.
Image of McFate pot and sherd
The field notes, Schoff’s
unpublished manuscript, photographs of the excavation and the artifacts from
his excavation are curated at The State Museum of Pennsylvania. Unfortunately,
in 1972, the site was graded for a housing development and completely
destroyed.
We
hope you’ve enjoyed this glimpse into the archaeology of Crawford County and
that it inspires you to learn more about the archaeology of your county. When
visiting Crawford County, be sure to visit Drake Well in Titusville to get a
glimpse of the earliest oil well in the United States. The near-by boom town of
Pit Hole will give you an idea of life in northwestern Pennsylvania during the “rush
to drill”. The resources of the county are Pennsylvania’s heritage and for all
of us it is our window into the past. Please help us preserve these important
resources by reporting and recording your archaeological finds while we all Preserve
our Past for the Future. (link toGIS web site)
Burkett,
Carl K. and Richard K Cunningham
1997 The McFate Site and Late Woodland Settlement
and Subsistance in French Creek Valley, Northwestern Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 67(1):4-20.
Carpenter,
Edmund S.
1950 The Spartansburg Cairns. Pennsylvania Archaeologist
20(1-2):40-46.
Carpenter,
Edmund S. and Harry L. Schoff
1951 The Nelson Mound, Crawford County, Penna. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 21(3-4):57-59.
Clark,
Neil A., Stanley W. Lantz, William J. Robinson
1960 The Danner Mound. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 30(2):37-45.
George,
Richard L.
1997 McFate Symposium Papers. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 67(1):1-3.
Mayer-Oakes,
William
1955 Prehistory of the Upper Ohio Valley. Annals of Carnegie Museum of Natural History
34.For more information, visit PAarchaeology.state.pa.us or the Hall of Anthropology and Archaeology at The State Museum of Pennsylvania .
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