Blog of the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office

Month: February 2022

A Look at the PASS Year: The 2021 Annual PASS Report

It’s that time of the year again! Time to report and reflect on another successful year of archaeological site recording efforts throughout Pennsylvania. In 2021, over 300 new archaeological sites were recorded by cultural resource management (CRM) projects, independent and university research projects, Society of Pennsylvania Archaeology (SPA) members, and long-time avocational archaeologist.

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Reinterpreting the Underground Railroad: The Sherman’s Dale Discharge Former Slaves’ Graves Site

In my short time as an archaeologist working in southeast Pennsylvania, I’ve learned that every basement, crawl space, and root cellar older than 1860 was at one time, a stop on the Underground Railroad (UGRR).  This of course is not true, but the mythologies of the UGRR are born out of the fact that the region played an important role in the network as the first free state north of the Mason-Dixon line. 

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