Pennsylvania Historic Preservation

Blog of the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office

Category: Archaeology (Page 15 of 16)

We still want your bound reports, and now we'd like them in .pdf, too.

Digital Underground: Seeking Electronic Versions of Archaeological Reports

December 19, 2014 / / 0 Comments

CRGIS LogoAs many of you will have noticed in your recent correspondence with our office, the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), we have made a change in number and media requested for archaeological report copies. We are now requesting just one hard copy for the permanent archive file here at the SHPO office in Harrisburg, as well as three electronic copies on disks. This recent change is an attempt to plan for a future time when archaeological reports will be available on the Cultural Resources Geographic Information System (CRGIS) to qualified users, in their entirety. Continue reading

In this 1754 illustration of Bethlehem, the largest building situated in the right-central portion of the image is the Brethren’s House, which was used periodically as the General Hospital of the Continental Army from 1776 to 1778. The hillside in the open field to the left of the creek (Monocacy Creek) became the burial place for hundreds of the first American soldiers.

The Revolutionary War Burial Ground in Bethlehem

October 29, 2014 / / 12 Comments

It’s not every day that you find a human skeleton out in your backyard. But this is exactly what happened in a residential part of the City of Bethlehem in February of 1995. Continue reading

Traces in the Woods

October 22, 2014 / / 1 Comment

Have you ever been walking through the woods and wondered who walked here before you? Setting aside the 16,000 years of prehistory in Pennsylvania, it is amazing to me how much our use of the land has changed during the last 350 years. Much of Penn’s Woods has gone from woods to farms to industrial tracts and back to woods. But all those activities have left traces on the land – some blatant, some subtle. Being an archaeologist by training, I look for those traces when I walk in the woods. Continue reading

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Archaeological Sites and the National Register

March 19, 2014 / / 1 Comment

The U. S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, describes the National Register of Historic Places as “the official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects significant in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture.  National Register properties have significance to the prehistory or history of their community, State, or the Nation (NPS 1990, revised 1997). Continue reading

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Improving Archaeological Reports and Review: Part 2

February 5, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Archaeology is a destructive science. Generally there are no exciting explosions, or catastrophic collapses when undertaking an excavation, but all the same, once a site or portion of a site is excavated it is gone for good. Every good archaeologist is trained to take this fact into account when doing archaeological work. We sketch, note, measure, photograph, and generally record every minute detail of an excavation knowing that we are destroying the very thing we are interested in understanding. This is why there is more than a little truth in the old adage that for every day spent in the field, the archaeologist spends at least as much time, and often more, analyzing, interpreting, and reporting on the information that has been collected. Continue reading

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Section 106 Consultation: 5 Steps to Meaningful Mitigation Outcomes

December 25, 2013 / / 1 Comment

Last month we discussed Section 106 consultation and how the outcome of the process is not predetermined but rather a result of the interaction among the participants, with the Federal agency making the final decision about how a project will proceed. Agencies in coordination with consulting parties are required to consider project design options that avoid or minimize effects to historic properties. However, it is not always possible to meet the needs of the project and simultaneously preserve a historic property. Continue reading

P.H.A.S.T. and Dirty.

November 1, 2013 / / 0 Comments

The crisis in transportation funding in Pennsylvania has had some consequences for the management of heritage resources.  Since the Federal Highway Administration and PennDOT are legally required to consider the effects transportation projects have on archaeological sites and historic structures and districts, the historically low levels of funding have made that mandate more difficult. The crisis has also limited the opportunities young archaeologists and historians have to gain practical experience in their profession, and to advance their careers as the numbers and size of transportation projects shrink. In 2010, archaeologists at PennDOT and at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) launched a new program intended to help address both problems. Continue reading

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