The Memorial Park Site (designated
36CN164) is an
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 a ...
located near the confluence of
Bald Eagle Creek and the
West Branch Susquehanna River
The West Branch Susquehanna River is one of the two principal branches, along with the North Branch, of the Susquehanna River in the Northeastern United States. The North Branch, which rises in upstate New York, is generally regarded as the exten ...
in
Lock Haven
Lock Haven is the county seat of Clinton County, in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Located near the confluence of the West Branch Susquehanna River and Bald Eagle Creek, it is the principal city of the Lock Haven Micropolitan Statistical Area ...
in the
U.S. state
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...
of
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, ...
.
Research projects conducted at the site since 1979 have found prehistoric cultural deposits that collectively span 8,000 years.
in age-related sequence, the deposits represent every major prehistoric period from the
Middle Archaic
Middle or The Middle may refer to:
* Centre (geometry), the point equally distant from the outer limits.
Places
* Middle (sheading), a subdivision of the Isle of Man
* Middle Bay (disambiguation)
* Middle Brook (disambiguation)
* Middle Creek ...
to the
Late Woodland
In the classification of archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 BCE to European contact in the eastern part of North America, with some archaeolog ...
.
The site's dominant component holds the remains of an early Late Woodland (500–1000
CE) village inhabited by people of the
Clemson Island culture.
The convergent streams and their two valleys made the site readily accessible to
pre-Columbian
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...
people living in both drainage basins.
Among the components of the site are two strata, dating from 5000-6000 and c. 2600
BP respectively. Both components were
radiocarbon dated
Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon.
The method was dev ...
from fragments of ''
Cucurbita pepo
''Cucurbita pepo'' is a cultivated plant of the genus ''Cucurbita''. It yields varieties of winter squash and pumpkin, but the most widespread varieties belong to the subspecies ''Cucurbita pepo'' subsp. ''pepo'', called summer squash.
It has b ...
'', the squash plant; the absence of wild squash plants near the site and its distance from well-documented wild populations is evidence that the gourds were intentionally brought to the location by humans.
[Fritz, Gayle J. ]
Gender and the Early Cultivation of Gourds in Eastern North America
. ''American Antiquity
The professional journal ''American Antiquity'' is published by Cambridge University Press for the Society for American Archaeology, an organization of professional archaeologists of the Americas. The journal is considered to be the flagship jou ...
'' 64.3 (1999): 417-429: 423.
Memorial Park contains the only area on the West Branch side of the point of land between the river and the creek that has not been disturbed by subsequent development.
Alluvial
Alluvium (from Latin ''alluvius'', from ''alluere'' 'to wash against') is loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water in a stream bed, on a floodplain, in an alluvial fan or beach, or in similar settings. All ...
deposits deep cover the site and have protected it from recent activity on the surface. The
Veterans of Foreign Wars acquired the property in the 1920s and used it for a park.
bought the fields adjacent to the park in the 1960s to use for airport runways and airplane storage. In the 1970s, Conran A. Hay, a consultant, discovered the prehistoric site during an
archeological survey conducted for the
. Subsequent research sponsored by the Office of State Archeology and the Office of Historic Preservation of the
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) is the governmental agency of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania responsible for the collection, conservation and interpretation of Pennsylvania's historic heritage. The commission cares fo ...
in 1980 helped determine the site boundaries.
See also
*
List of archaeological periods (North America)
North American archaeological periods divides the history of pre-Columbian North America into a number of named successive eras or periods, from the earliest-known human habitation through to the early Colonial period which followed the European ...
*
*
National Register of Historic Places listings in Clinton County, Pennsylvania
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Memorial Park Site
Archaic period in North America
Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania
Lock Haven, Pennsylvania
National Register of Historic Places in Clinton County, Pennsylvania