The Prehistory of the Spring Creek Watershed

Evidence that people were in Central Pennsylvania for thousands of years before European Contact comes from several sources: artifacts collected by local residents, and archaeological surveys and excavations.  Artifacts collected by local residents can be important in expanding information about the past when shared with the archeological community.  A large survey of the Bald Eagle Watershed was done in 1978 by archaeologists from Penn State’s Department of Anthropology as part of Pennsylvania’s National Register Survey Program. This survey included nine one-mile square units in the Spring Creek Watershed (SCW).  Surveys and excavations conducted by other people have also added significant information to our knowledge of this area’s prehistory.  

When did people first come to what is now Centre County?  For now, we can say with certainty that there were some people here about 13,000 years ago but probably only intermittently.  A very small number of distinctive stone Clovis spearpoints from that time period have been discovered in the SCW.  One was found near Fillmore along Buffalo Run Creek and one was found near Slab Cabin Run at what is now the Millbrook Marsh Nature Center.   Others are known from the Bald Eagle Valley, the Susquehanna West Branch, and beyond.  There is evidence from the Meadowcroft Rockshelter in southwestern Pennsylvania placing people there about 16,000 years ago, and perhaps even several thousand years earlier.  However, if any people were in the SCW earlier than Clovis people, evidence of their presence has not been recognized. 

We refer to these early people who were here before 10,000 years ago (8000 B.C.) as Paleoindians.  They were explorers in a landscape that had been affected by the Wisconsin ice sheet that reached its maximum extent about 22,000 years ago, at which time it was about 50 miles north and northeast of State College.  By 13,000 years ago, the ice sheet had receded into Canada, and Ice Age animals, such as mammoths and mastodons, were becoming extinct.  Paleoindians may be implicated in the disappearance of such animals, along with a changing climate. Small groups of Paleoindians probably moved frequently in search for their basic needs—food, water, shelter, and stone for making tools.  It would have been logical for them to follow rivers and streams and return to good sources of stone during their wanderings. 

The geology of the SCW has endowed it with a variety of ecological settings, or ecozones, that would have provided prehistoric hunter-gatherers with most of their basic needs.  These ecozones include the Bald Eagle, Nittany and Tussey Mountains, with their slopes, ridge tops, and ravines; the rolling valley floor, and Spring Creek with its tributaries and associated wetlands and springs.  This variety of ecozones would have supported a diversity of plants and animals that would have been attractive to human foragers.  The geology of the area also meant that good sources of stone for tools were present.  The limestone formations include many chert nodules, and jasper is present in several locations due to ancient geological events. 

The hunting-gathering lifestyle continued for thousands of years, during which the local vegetation changed gradually from a boreal landscape to a temperate forest recognizable to us today, one dominated by oaks and other deciduous tree species with a mix of conifers.  The human population appears to have increased in relation to an increase in available food resources, such as nuts, during what is called the Archaic Period, about 8000 B.C. to 1000 B.C.  Over time the styles of stone points used on spears or darts changed.  Radiocarbon dating of charcoal or other charred organic matter found associated with points makes it possible to discern when certain styles were made.  Artifacts from the Archaic Period in this area are mainly found along streams and near springs, but some are also found in places that may have been related to hunting activities and stone resources.  Many local sites appear to have been occupied between about 4000 B.C. and 1000 B.C. 

Several sites in the SCW that have been partially excavated provide evidence of occupations during this time period. The Milesburg site is located on former West Penn Power property at the confluence of Spring Creek and Bald Eagle Creek. A project was undertaken there in 1976 by archaeologists from the Penn State Anthropology Department. They hoped to find prehistoric material and perhaps some evidence of a Lenape Indian, known as Bald Eagle (Waupelani), who lived in that area about 1770.  What they found were the remains of prehistoric campsites dating from about 6500 B.C. to A.D. 1500, with most of the artifacts dating from about 3000 B.C. to 1000 B.C.  This location had obviously been occupied often by people traveling along these streams.  

Another Archaic site was studied in Linden Hall in 2010 by Heberling Associates before a bridge replacement took place.  This location is close to a source of chert, a stone material favored by prehistoric people for making tools.  The artifacts and radiocarbon dating of charcoal from hearths revealed occupations between about 4000 B.C. and 1500 B.C.  While making new chert tools was the primary activity while people camped there, edgewear analysis of some of the tools showed that a variety of other activities also took place:  butchering meat; sawing and grooving bone; sawing antler; cleaning, scraping, piercing, and cutting hide, and sawing, planning, boring, wedging, grooving, and whittling wood.   Many of these activities were probably undertaken at other campsites in the watershed. 

The Jacks Mill site east of Boalsburg near Galbraith Gap Run was studied by members of the Bald Eagle Archaeological Society in 1981 and also by Penn State personnel in 1983 before part of the site was developed.  The presence of many prehistoric pits in the subsoil and artifacts dating from about 8000 B.C. to A.D. 1500 led to the determination that the site was eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.  Radiocarbon dates for charcoal and charred nutshell from some of the pits ranged between 3500 B.C. and 1000 B.C.  This location appears to have been favored as a fall base camp for some groups during that time frame, with hunting and nut gathering activities obvious.  The presence of many scraping and cutting tools indicates that other activities, such as hide working, were performed there also.  This location would have provided easy access to ecozones associated with Tussey Mountain and Penns Valley, as well as streams and wetlands. 

A series of sites in and near what is now the Millbrook Marsh Nature Center were known to local artifact collectors for many years. Some of the sites were studied before the construction of the State College Bypass, when an area that included about 30 sites was determined to be eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places as the Houserville Archaeological District.  Almost all the sites are related to a source of jasper, a good tool stone, that is located along Orchard Road and East Park Avenue.  This stone source was discovered by some Paleoindians, perhaps about 10,000 B.C., and was the focus of many prehistoric groups who obtained jasper there and made new tools while camping along nearby Slab Cabin Run and Spring Creek.  The artifacts recovered from the sites date from about 10,000 B.C. to about A.D. 1500, with most of them being from the Archaic Period.  The jasper quarry site was studied in 1999 by archaeologists from the Penn State Department of Anthropology before East Park Avenue was widened.  

In this same area, a mitigation project was carried out in 2017 by personnel from PennDOT and Juniata College at the James W. Hatch site along Puddintown Road before a bike path was constructed.  Several hearths uncovered in the excavation were dated to about 7500 B.C., 3500 B.C., and A.D. 500.  Activity areas around the hearths contained jasper debris from tool making.  Edgewear analysis of some tools showed other activities:  butchery, hide work, and work on bone, antler, wood, and mussel shell.  The people who camped there were using a variety of raw materials found in the area in addition to hunting and making tools.  The people who occupied most of the other nearby sites presumably would have pursued similar activities while replenishing their toolkits with new jasper tools.  

Moving on in time, archaeologists refer to the time between 1000 B.C. and A.D. 1600 as the Woodland Period.  By 1000 B.C. local groups were making pottery, and this technology allowed better ways of cooking and storing food.  The technology of the bow used with arrows tipped with small triangular stone points was adopted about A.D. 500.  The shape of the stone points changed over time, as did the way ceramic vessels were made and decorated.  By A.D. 800 some plants that had been domesticated elsewhere, such as corn, squash/pumpkin, and beans, were becoming an important part of the diet of people here.  A more settled lifestyle evolved, but hunting and gathering continued to be important.  

The horticulture of plants seems to have led to more permanent villages along larger streams, such as the Susquehanna West Branch.  Small satellite hamlets or farmsteads were established along streams such as Spring Creek.  All of these habitations were located on alluvial soils that could be cultivated with digging sticks and bone or stone hoes.  The population increased in this period, perhaps leading to conflicts that resulted in some villages along the West Branch being stockaded.  These villages sometimes had longhouses that would have accommodated multiple families.  On the other hand, hamlets had small houses that might have accommodated one family or a small extended family.  Hamlets might have been inhabited during the growing season, with the inhabitants returning to a village for the winter. 

The only hamlet currently known in the SCW is the Shuey site, which is located on a floodplain along Spring Creek on the western edge of Bellefonte.  The site was studied by the local Bald Eagle Archaeological Society in the 1990’s.  One part of the site had material dating from about A.D.1 to A.D. 400, but most of the site was occupied by various groups of people between about A.D. 1200 and A.D. 1500.  The evidence of these later occupations included house patterns, keyhole patterns, pottery, burials, animal bones, and charred remains of corn, nuts, and seeds.  The keyhole structures, which were smaller than houses and probably shaped like an igloo, were probably used for smoking and storing food and other activities.  Several ceramic styles and radiocarbon dates show that different groups reused the site during that period of several hundred years.  The occupants may have spent winters in a village, returning to this location repeatedly during the growing season.  If nearby firewood was depleted or the soil had become less fertile, they may have moved to another location along Spring Creek or Bald Eagle Creek.  

Over time, the Spring Creek Watershed has been a temporary home for many prehistoric people.  Most of these people were in groups of hunter-gatherers who camped next to streams while they procured food and other resources available in the nearby environment.  They replenished their toolkits using local jasper and chert, and they left behind some tools, stone debris from making tools, hearths used for cooking and heating, and sometimes pits dug into the subsoil for various purposes.  The people who came after A.D. 800 appear to have settled for the growing season in floodplain areas amenable for primitive horticulture.  In addition to some tools and stone debris, they left behind hearths, pits, broken pottery, and evidence in the subsoil of where small houses and other structures had been located.  Whoever these people were, they experienced the Spring Creek Watershed in ways we may find hard to imagine. 

Mary Alice Graetzer earned a M. A. degree in Anthropology from Penn State University. She has worked on several local prehistoric sites and is active in the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology and its local chapter, the Bald Eagle Archaeological Society.