Shawnee-Minisink Site is a prehistoric

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...

located in Smithfield Township,

Monroe County, Pennsylvania Monroe County is a County (United States), county in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is located in Northeastern Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 168,327. Its coun ...

in the upper

Delaware Valley The Delaware Valley is a metropolitan region on the East Coast of the United States that comprises and surrounds Philadelphia, the sixth most populous city in the nation and 68th largest city in the world as of 2020. The toponym Delaware Val ...

. It was the site of a Paleoindian camp site. ''Note:'' This includes It was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 2007.

Archaeology

The site covers an area of about 4,000 square meters with the Paleo-Indian and Early Archaic remains some meters below the ground. It was first excavated in 1972, in two short seasons (test squares with additional auguring totally 38 square meters) by a non-scientist archaeologist. From 1974 to 1977 it was excavated by an American University team led by Charles W. McNett Jr. Additional excavations were conducted from 2003 to 2006 covering 40 square meters in an area south of the original excavations. Finds included a heavily reworked Clovis point and a number of scrapers and cores. Two hearths were found in the Clovis layer which when radiocarbon dated produced a mean date of 10,937 ± 15 years

Before Present Before Present (BP) years, or "years before present", is a time scale used mainly in archaeology, geology and other scientific disciplines to specify when events occurred relative to the origin of practical radiocarbon dating in the 1950s. Becaus ...

.Iceland, Harry, "Refining Paleo-Indian Lithic Technology at Shawnee-Minisink via an Artifact Refitting Study", North American Archaeologist, vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 237-267, 2013

References

{{Authority control Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania Monroe County, Pennsylvania National Register of Historic Places in Monroe County, Pennsylvania Native American history of Pennsylvania