Welcome to NCC8

Welcome to the official website of Northcentral Chapter 8 of the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology. During spring and summer, NCC8 hosts an archaeology dig for its members and the public.

Join us for the 2012 Archaeology Dig from 5:30-7 p.m. Thursdays during spring and summer 2012, at the Canfield Lane site. (See the map at right for directions.)

Meetings are held at 6 p.m. the first Monday of the month, October through April, at Lycoming County Historical Society, 858 W. Fourth St., Williamsport, PA 17701. We welcome inquires and encourage you to explore this website and learn more about our organization. Please feel free to attend any meeting or any public dig we have scheduled.

Northcentral Chapter 8 is active with nearly three dozen members. Its mission is to discover and preserve the region's American Indian and Pioneer heritage.  The chapter provides archaeological excavation training sessions for new members and teaches them how to identify artifacts.

We maintain an online archaeology handbook for the amateur, as well as slideshows and videos of previous excavations. You'll learn much about Pennsylvania prehistory within these pages, as well as how to observe Archaeology Month, which occurs in October in Pennsylvania.

If you're interested in membership information, just click on the menu link above. We accept payments online and through traditional mail, or in person. Review our calendar for upcoming meetings and events. Use our Links page when researching or looking for contacts in archaeology. If you would like to know who we are, click on the About Us link for current officers and members.

Mystery Artifact Found

By Tank Baird
President, North Central Chapter 8

Imagine going back 1,000 years ago to the banks of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. At that time, the area was inhabited only by Native Americans.

These people were the first land clearers in the region and farmed corn, beans and squash in open fields, some of which, kept cleared by subsequent cultures, lasted until the coming of the Europeans, a full 600 years from that point. It might be noted that knocking down huge trees (some of these trees were 10 feet in diameter) in virgin forest with stone axes was a daunting task but probably started with using bark as a building material and ended in girdling and burning the tree to bring it down.

They hunted deer and bear, fished the river with nets and built multi-family, multi-generational dwellings called “long houses.”

Their canoes carried them down from their native lands in central New York State and now plied up and down the river in a colonization of this part of Pennsylvania that would last for more than 400 years.

While they were here, they became mound builders, most likely borrowing the idea from the already declined Adena and Hopewell cultures, whose mounds and earthworks still remained in New York and Ohio. We know from the excavation of these huge earthen mounds locally at Muncy, Lock Haven and Lewisburg that they were used for burying the dead and possibly to mark these cleared fields as theirs.

These same fields would prove to be a valuable commodity and eventually target them for conquest.

Archaeologists identified these people as the Clemsons Island culture, naming them after the island in the Susquehanna River where they were first excavated in the 1970s.

Archaeologists also know that they, along with another culture or subculture, the Owasco (also originating in central New York and “cousins,” if you will) occupied the entire Susquehanna River basin beginning in approximately 800 A.D. until 1250 A.D.

Stroll the Heritage Trail

A stroll along the James P. Bressler Heritage Trail on Canfield Island is invigorating and educational. It's also tranquil, this quiet spot along the Susquehanna River's West Branch.

The trail is part of Loyalsock Township's Riverfront Park and is dedicated to James P. Bressler. A scholar and educator beloved in his community, Bressler carved a niche for himself in the region's prehistory and history books with his archaeological investigations.

Archaeologist James Bressler visits Riverfront Heritage Park named in his honor. Located on Canfield Island, the park contains a significant prehistoric Indian village in Loyalsock Township. Bressler and members of Northcentral Chapter 8 of the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology excavated prehistoric sites in the area for many decades and Bressler is responsible for having the island listed with the National Register of Historic Places

"That is, in my estimation, one of the best-kept secrets in the county," Bressler said about the trail in a previous interview. "This is a unique attempt to integrate a number of different things. First of all, local history is really not being taught in our schools because there are too many competing things to teach. I understand that. But this is a unique way to combine a pleasant walk, a history lesson, and nature study. It's just a pleasure to walk around there."

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