Shawnee-Minisink Archaeological Site, Smithfield Township, Monroe County

One last reminder - you've got a few more days to email me (markerquestblog@gmail.com) and tell me about your favorite PHMC historical marker! Next week I'll be sharing the submissions I've received. 

This week's subject took me by surprise. I collected the marker quite some time ago - I'm not even sure how long it's been, but it was the last time my bff Andrea and I went on a drive through Monroe County. The part that surprised me was the fact that I hadn't written about it yet, because for some reason I thought I had. Don't ask me why. As I've become fond of saying, my brain has too many tabs open at any given moment. 

So we'll take a look at the subject today, and it's the first time this blog is going back to prehistoric days. I don't mean back when I was walking my pet dinosaur after school, either; I mean back when we actually had mastodons roaming around Pennsylvania. Everybody into the time machine, and set the dial for several thousand years ago.

The story of this site started roughly 15,000 years before I wrote this blog post (give or take ten minutes), when the last ice age ended. Pennsylvania, or rather what would eventually become Pennsylvania, started thawing. This led, after another few thousand years, to what archaeologists call the "Younger Dryas." This was a brief but fierce return to similar conditions as what had been seen in the ice age, followed by another warming. If this is confusing to you, I understand and apologize; I'm trying to make sense out of what I'm reading as I read it. But these alternating periods of cold and warm created what scientists describe as a "mosaic environment," in which there is a large variety of food available, both meat and vegetation.

It was also in this time frame that humans started showing up on this part of the planet. The modern people who decide such things named them Paleo-Indians; what they called themselves, if indeed they called themselves anything, we'll probably never know. The Paleo-Indians, or Lithic peoples, were the earliest known settlers in the Americas. It's been traditionally believed that they came from North Asia via the Bering land bridge, where the Bering Strait is today. This connected to what is now Alaska, and from there spread out across the rest of the continent. This land bridge still exists in fragments, but for several thousand years BCE, it was quite extensive.

They began setting up camp settlements in what eventually became Monroe County, near where the Delaware River and Brodhead Creek meet, surrounded by many of the trees which would someday inspire the name of Penn's Woods. In their camps, they were able to take advantage of that mosaic environment and its varied and probably delicious food sources. Although hunters did bring in game meat, probably things like caribou or maybe even elk, the bulk of the Paleo-Indian diet consisted of fruit, berries, and fish.

All right, everybody back into the time machine, and now we're heading for a year that's a lot easier for us to comprehend, at least for the most part. Set the coordinates for the same location, but in 1972. It was then and there that Don Kline, who had a hobbyist passion for archaeology, discovered evidence of these ancient camps. Over the next several years, teams of archaeologists and university students excavated what was named the Shawnee-Minisink Archaeological Site. They found an absolute wealth of information about our Paleoindian ancestors, including remnants of the food they used, pieces of tools, arrowheads, the charred remains of bonfires, and many other relics of the past. They also found strong indications that the Delaware River flooded several times during the warming periods after the ice age, because many of the relics were covered in a thick layer of sand which was almost certainly the result of that river flooding. Other information they were able to glean from their investigations told them about the local climate and weather patterns, even the direction in which the wind was likely blowing most of the time. 

Further excavations into the 21st century uncovered artifacts specific to what is known as the Clovis culture, a sort of subset of the Paleo-Indians. Named for Clovis, New Mexico, where the first such find was unearthed, the Clovis people crafted very distinctive tools. In particular, they're known for what are called Clovis points; these are arrowheads, spearheads, and other projectile points, characterized by their leaflike shape and fluted edges. They are believed to have been hunters of prehistoric megafauna (big game animals), especially mammoths.

The archaeological site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007, and the PHMC marker was unveiled three years later. It remains, as the marker states, one of the earliest dated Native American locations in our part of the country, and also one of the richest in terms of artifacts. Today it's part of the River's Edge Park, a public facility just outside of the Delaware Water Gap. I'm not sure if they still excavate there (if you know, please leave a comment and I'll gladly update the post), but the township preserves it and recognizes its importance to the archaeological community. 

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Sources and Further Reading:

Heinrich, Keith. "Spotlight Series: The Shawnee-Minisink Archaeological Site." Blog of the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office, March 12, 2014.

Author unidentified. "The Dedication of the Shawnee Minisink Site Historical Marker." This Week in Pennsylvania (blog of the State Museum of Pennsylvania), July 9, 2010.

McNett, Charles W. Shawnee Minisink: A Stratified Paleoindian-Archaic Site in the Upper Delaware Valley of Pennsylvania. Academic Press, 1985.

Shawnee-Minisink Archaeological Site at the Historical Marker Database

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Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.