Archaeology Find: Drilled Holes in Metate, Bannerstones Last week we had an artifact found by member Jim Carn and pretty much it’s been a part-time job for me trying to validate the find ever since. Jim actually brought it to my house on the bed of his pickup. At about two feet [...]
Archaeology Find: Metate Confirmed The exciting news today is that during this pandemic Jim Carn has found a real mystery item. We have sent pictures to Gary Fogelman and at this point, he thinks it might be the real thing pending closer examination. He is also mystified about the hole. Jim wrote [...]
Archaeology Find: Metate in Lycoming County, PA I’m taking advantage of the sunshine (aka coronavirus killer). I went fishing and foraging. I was a hunter-gatherer. See the first picture. These are ramps They are not spring onions although many people call them that. These are leek and you can use the entire [...]
Archaeology Find: Bird Points for Arrows The weekend was pretty busy with interaction via email. We are inspiring conversations on typology, archaeology, local history, and artifact identification. Covid19 time indoors has been an opportunity for learning. This morning, how about bird points as a topic? They are also called jewel or gem [...]
Archaeology Finds: Miscellaneous Points, Adze, Etc. The shared artifacts were found locally by Hunter Duffield. Hunter has been surface collecting in the Montoursville area and Dick Snyder called me and asked that I give him a hand. So let's look at the pictures. Picture 1 is a couple of Archaic points the [...]
“They were driven from the lands on which they had settled and on April 18, 1752, Andrew Montour was commissioned by the governor to settle and reside upon these Indian lands, the Indians on July 2, 1750, having petitioned for such occupation, and arrangements having been made with them for such occupation at a place [...]
The date was June 10th, 1778. In the east, the Revolutionary War raged and colonial forces under General George Washington were seeing key victories producing a turning point in the conflict. People living here in what would become Lycoming County PA were also part of that war. They were fighting for their lives against an [...]
So, what does a forty-five-foot tall, forty-one-ton monument on private land, the Susquehannock Indians, an ex-bank president in Indian dress-up, and a magical place called Lockabar have in common? Well, historian Carl Becker once said it best, "history is an imaginative creation" and that tongue-in-cheek remark never bore more truth than the story of the [...]
Imagine going back 1,000 years ago to the banks of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. At that time, the area was inhabited only by Native Americans. Tank Baird of Williamsport holds a piece of pottery which he and members of the North Central Chapter 8 of the Society for PA Archeology found [...]
Sunburned, rain whipped and with really bad hair (I was sporting the Don King look) my wife Anita and I recently rode into Washington, Pennsylvania in the early evening. We were only 20 or 30 miles short of our destination of Wheeling, West Virginia, but I promised at one point during the ride that we [...]
