The Sommerheim Park Archaeological District includes a group of six

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 ...

s west of

Erie Erie (; ) is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie and the county seat of Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. Erie is the fifth largest city in Pennsylvania and the largest city in Northwestern Pennsylvania with a population of 94,831 a ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The sites are in Sommerheim Park, one of the few undeveloped areas of the

Lake Erie Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has t ...

shoreline, in Millcreek Township. This district has been listed on 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 ...

. This is one of the leading archaeological sites in the Erie area and along the southern shoreline of Lake Erie, due to the amount of artifacts and the lack of

disturbance Disturbance and its variants may refer to: Math and science * Disturbance (ecology), a temporary change in average environmental conditions that causes a pronounced change in an ecosystem * Disturbance (geology), linear zone of faults and folds ...

on the site.

Discoveries

Excavations revealed artifacts across a wide area of the park, including in the north where there are former farmlands and in dense woods along the park's eastern edge. The artifacts uncovered represent a wide range of

archaeological culture An archaeological culture is a recurring assemblage of types of artifacts, buildings and monuments from a specific period and region that may constitute the material culture remains of a particular past human society. The connection between thes ...

s. Digs at six sites have found evidence from the entire Archaic period (roughly 8,000BCE to 1,000BCE) and the Early and Middle

Woodland period In the classification of :category:Archaeological cultures of North America, archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 Common Era, BCE to European con ...

(roughly 1,000BCE to 500CE). Artifacts include an especially dense concentration of Late Archaic remnants as well as a nineteenth-century dump created after European settlement. Various

stone tool A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone Ag ...

s and evidence of Late Archaic houses have been found, indicating that the area may have been occupied seasonally by a fishing and hunting people. Although the findings have been largely limited to the tops of the area's bluffs, scholars believe that the edges of the bluffs may yield evidence of prehistoric cemeteries. The district is significant because few seasonal campsites from before the Late Woodland period have been discovered along Lake Erie.

Excavation

Local archaeologist C. Frederick Sanford's discovery of

Plano point In archaeology, Plano point is flaked stone projectile points and tools created by the various Plano cultures of the North American Great Plains between 9000 BC and 6000 BC for hunting, and possibly to kill other humans. They are bifacially worked ...

s in Sommerheim Park in 1975 led to the first recognition of the area as a possible archaeological site. Students at Erie's

Gannon University Gannon University is a private Catholic university in Erie, Pennsylvania. Gannon University has approximately 4,500 students and 46,000 alumni. Its intercollegiate athletics include 18 athletic programs for men and women competing at the NCAA Di ...

investigated the park under the leadership of a university archaeologist in the summer of that year, beginning a program of annual field schools that continued through the rest of the 1970s. These excavations yielded little evidence of disturbance at the sites, adding to their significance. While some parts of the bluffs had been cultivated after European settlement of the area, the damage was limited to the shallow upper layers of earth that could be cultivated with horse-drawn plows. The district's location on a lake bluff is likely to be the reason that it has survived; many similar sites likely once existed along nearby beaches and ridges, but they have likely been destroyed by the expansion of Erie and its suburbs and by

quarry A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to reduce their envi ...

ing for sand and gravel.

Preservation

Well-preserved Native American archaeological sites are a rarity in the Lake Erie plain. The amount of information found at the Sommerheim Park sites makes them one of the leading archaeological sites in the Erie area and the southern shoreline of Lake Erie. In recognition of their significance, the sites were designated a

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal protection from c ...

and listed on the

in 1986. No other Native American village sites northwest of

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

are listed on the Register, and the only other prehistoric site on the Register in northwestern Pennsylvania is

Indian God Rock Indian God Rock is a large boulder in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Located near the unincorporated community of Brandon, it lies along the Allegheny River in Venango County's Rockland Township. It is significant f ...

, a

petroglyph A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...

Venango County Venango County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 50,454. Its county seat is Franklin. The county was created in 1800 and later organized in 1805. Venango County comprises the Oil City, ...

Discoveries

Excavation

Preservation

See also

References

Further reading