Mon/Yough Chapter #3 Membership Drive!

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The Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology, Mon/Yough Chapter #3 based out of California University is having a membership drive! We want to become a Nonprofit and to promote archaeology in western Pennsylvania and hopefully beyond!

Yearly Membership Costs:

Sustaining $20 (15 Euros)

Family $30 (22 Euros)

Student (with ID) $10 (7.5 Euros)

Junior Members (under 12) FREE!


With membership you get a monthly news letter detailing the organization's current projects, you can participate on any of our site excavations and artifact analysis! 

Please support or donate so that we may continue to explore this region's past!

Check or money order payable to:

SPA Mon/Yough Chapter #3

Address to send membership dues and donations:

SPA Mon/Yough Chapter #3

c/o John Nass

Mailbox: 30

California University of Pennsylvania

250 University Ave.

California, PA 15419

We need your help to move our organization forward! 


Here is a little preview of the artifacts found at the Gormley House in Brownsville, Pennsylvania!

Any suggestions on this ceramic type?

Spongeware 

Earthenware smoking pipe fragment

Pearlware (Queensware)

Transfer print

Archaeology and the Community

One of the more interesting aspects being involved in the local archaeological community, is public interaction and outreach. Many archaeologists both in CRM (Cultural Resource Management) and in academia, simply do not actively involve themselves with their own local community. This is unfortunate, and I think it has more to do with perception than actual effort. Within CRM, many field archaeologists are comfortable digging holes, screening, and identifying cultural remains.

However, it has been my experience that many are not comfortable in their own knowledge to take what they find further. Many field techs have expressed that, "they are not paid the big bucks for interpretation." or "leave it for those in the lab or the PI to figure the site out." This type of attitude has left a vacuum in the community where often such information is sought. Academics as well have left many of their own communities out to dry. They may research events, individuals, and historic places only to leave the community in the dark. Local historians have often kept their files in cabinets and drawers, never to see the light of day.

So what is the answer? Knowledge brings with it responsibility. For people like myself who teeter on the edge of two worlds, academic and public, we often find that although there are outlets for knowledge, such as conferences and journals, the names and faces who attend or subscribe are often the same. The people who need the information are not subscribing to journals, or are paying for conferences. The local mayor of you home town does not receive the Society of Historic Archaeology journal or attend the Eastern States Archaeological conference. That leaves only us as an "archaeological community" to educate the local community.

Angel Sit Part 3: Site Stratigraphy.

Hi Everyone,

This is the third part of my continuing series on excavations at the Father Angel Site in Greene County, Pennsylvania. This part examines a concept borrowed from geology called STRATIGRAPHY. Basically, stratigraphy is layers built upon layers. Much like a wedding cake if you slice into it, you'll see a layer of cake, a layer of icing, maybe a layer of chocolate, and then another layer of cake and so on. The Earth's crust is formed in a similar way, with layer upon layer of rock built one on top of the other. So what does this have to do with archaeology? Well, archaeological sites are created in the same way. Depending on where the site is located, it may have many layers like if it were on a floodplain, or just a few layers like out in a farmer's field.

So why is stratigraphy important? To start off, let's imagine a trashcan. I throw a piece of crumpled up paper into it, and over the next few weeks, I fill it up. Then I realize that a piece of paper I threw in that first week was an important bill! Where in the trashcan would I look? Not at the top of the pile, those papers are very recent. Not in the middle either, while they're old my bill was from a week before those papers were thrown in. I would dig to the very bottom of the can because that's where the oldest pieces of paper are located. So the stratigraphy of the papers in the trashcan led me to my bill, because I knew that the oldest pieces of paper were on the bottom. This is the LAW OF SUPERPOSITION. Layers are deposited in a sequence of youngest to oldest be they sedimentary rock layers or cultural layers containing artifacts.

In this video, I'm talking about the stratigraphy of the Father Angel Site. Please turn up the volume on you speakers! For some reason, the audio is very soft!

I'm Back!

Hi All!

It's been a while since I've posted on here but I now have a new update! I was busy on a Phase I survey in Greene County, Pennsylvania on some game lands for the building of a new wetland area. When a state agency such as Penndot, Game Commission, or other state funded agency has to destroy a wetland, another one has to be constructed. So as an archaeologist, my crew and I were contracted to see what types of cultural resources (artifacts) might be hidden beneath the floodplain soils.

In order to accomplish this, we used a series of interesting people and gadgets to get the job done. One of these specialists, a GEOMORPHOLOGIST, or PEDOLOGIST, came out to our site to have a look at the many layers of soil that were deposited during the past several thousand years of flooding. These scientists study the the composition, age, and origin of soils. Plus they can tell us if a soil layer is young enough to have artifacts or too old before humans were on the North American continent.

The second type of specialist we used was a ZOOARCHAEOLOGIST. A zooarchaeologist study the remains from animals that are found on archaeological sites. While completing our Phase I survey, we came across teeth from a bovid type animal (cow, bison, ox) buried at 90cm. These teeth needed to be identified, so we sent them to a zooarchaeological specialist who came back with the disappointing conclusion that they were in fact from a cow! The cow must have died on the banks of the nearby creek and its body silted in during subsequent flood events.

One cool piece of equipment that we played with out there was a ground penetrating radar or GRP for short. This machine looks like a push lawn mower that is pushed or pulled over the ground in strait tight rows. The radar moved through the soil layers and dependent on what those layers are made from, or if they have been disturbed by human activity, the waves from the radio take more or less time to be reflected back to the machine. This produces a wavy pattern on the readout display that for someone that is trained, can see the outline of a grave or ditch as compared to just regular undisturbed soil.

Well I hope you had an informative read, I promise to update more regularly now that I'm out of the field so check back for more!

(In this photo: Dave Kroskie starting a 1X2 and Susan Balint [my girlfriend] screening for artifacts)