Archaeology Field School Meets Transportation Data Recovery: An Alternative Mitigation at the James W. Hatch Site (36CE544), Centre County, Pennsylvania

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Byways to the Past: An American Highway Archaeology Symposium" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Data recovery investigations at the James W. Hatch Site in Centre County, Pennsylvania via a collaboration between PennDOT, the Federal Highway Administration, and Juniata College demonstrate the potential for transportation archaeology to provide insightful data on prehistoric lifeways. The project provides a glimpse of prehistoric utilization of Bald Eagle Jasper informative at the local scale where its predominance and use define the Houserville Archaeological District, and regionally as the Bald Eagle formation jasper displays an isotopic "fingerprint" distinct from those of Eastern Pennsylvania and other quarries in the northeastern United States. Given the local jasper’s prominence as the preferred lithic raw material in the district, contiguous block excavations and microwear analyses reveal a significant amount of onsite activities include various forms of butchery, hide preparation, and bone, antler, and shell working in addition to secondary reduction and biface production. Iron isotope studies funded by the project show promise as a robust means of geochemical discrimination and sourcing. The innovative collaboration resulted in a cost-effective alternative mitigation for College Township’s bicycle path, and provided undergraduates and graduate students high-impact experiential learning in the form of an intensive archaeological field school.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Byways to the Past: An American Highway Archaeology Symposium   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24218