Hanna’s Town: Answering New Questions About Pennsylvania’s Frontier Using Old Collection

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jay Taylor.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze tools found at Hanna’s Town to determine the nature of the various tasks performed by its residents, and the town’s economic conditions. This analysis aims to answer these research questions: (1.) What kinds of tools are present at Hanna’s Town and what tasks are they associated with? (2.) Does the spatial arrangement of these artifacts reveal any information about where these tasks took place? (3.) Are there any relationships between these tools that may...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefanie Smith.

With the cooperation of the Westmoreland County Historical Society and Indiana University of Pennsylvania, faunal remains from three areas of the Historic Hanna’s Town site in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania were subjected to detailed zooarchaeological analysis in an effort to answer broad questions regarding the subsistence practices of eighteenth century frontier communities of Western Pennsylvania. As the first court and county seat west of the Allegheny Mountains, Hanna’s Town played a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy A. Carn.

The rapid technological advances in digital computing of the preceding fifty years have allowed for an ever increasing complex analysis of archaeological assemblages. For those working with legacy collections curated before the advent of personal computing, the task of digitizing and formatting data into a usable form while also insuring against the same obsolescence that is being corrected can be daunting. The Applied Archaeology program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania takes a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley D. Taylor.

Hanna's Town (36WM203), an 18th century site located in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, was a major settlement that was attacked and destroyed by a force of British and Native Americans in 1782. The town never fully recovered, and the land was repurposed for agricultural use until it was purchased in 1969 by Westmoreland County, who reconstructed the town for tourism purposes. Overlooking the site is the town's cemetery, which has been given little attention in regards to research. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ben L. Ford.

Hanna’s Town, the first English court west of the Allegheny Mountains, was an important political and economic center in western Pennsylvania from 1769 until it was burned by a party of Seneca and English in 1782. After its destruction, the site was farmed for 150 years before it was acquired by Westmoreland County and placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Over the past four decades a variety of professional, academic, and amateur archaeologists have excavated the site, generating...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David J. Breitkreutz.

The colonial settlement of Hanna’s Town is a vital connection to Pennsylvania’s frontier history. The significance of the Hanna’s Town site to regional heritage is represented by the effort expended by the Westmoreland County Historical Society on archaeological and geophysical projects that have taken place at the site since 1969. However, after numerous investigations, not much is known about layout of the Hanna’s Town settlement. This paper will potentially demonstrate that specialized...