The Adena Find In Loganton PA

Archaeologist Tank Baird, discussing the Adena finds in Loganton PA

"I will probably never excavate artifacts in Egypt or Rome, but we have items just as old right under out feet here in PA." said Tank Baird, at his talk on the recent Native American finds in Loganton PA.

And sometimes no excavation is needed to find them.  In Tank's talk yesterday, he mentioned watching a groundhog dig a hole, and in the newly dug up ground he found a 5,000 year old arrowhead, laying right on top. 

 But the discovery that is the talk of our area right now was found years ago by a boy and his grandfather, and stored in a cigar box.    Years later, that boy, now grown,  brought the finds to Tank Baird to be displayed - having no idea what a significant discovery he had been holding on to all of these years.

The Criel Mound, in West Virginia

At one time the Adena mound sites numbered up to 200, but only a small number of them remain today. Some of these include the Criel and Grave Creek Mounds in West Virginia, and the Adena, Biggs, Enon, Miamisburg, and Wolf Plains Mounds in Ohio.

In maps of the "mound builders" sites -  the Hopewell and Adena cultures - there is a large blank spot on the map, comprised of most of Pennsylvania. There is no sign of them along the Susquehanna River, that area appears to have been off limits to them.    Although there are many sites found around the Chesapeake Bay area, and throughout Ohio & West VIrginia, there was no real evidence of Adena culture throughout most of the middle of Pennsylvania.  

 Or there was evidence, but it was sitting in a cigar box, waiting to be identified.  Once Tank saw the artifacts, immediately recognizing them as Adena, he was able to explore the area where they had been found all of those years ago.  The land is private property, and until the land owners make decisions on how to proceed, the location is not being disclosed.  It is near Fishing Creek, and it is a "significant find".  

An Adena Pipe, discovered in a mound in Ohio.

 The Adena culture was a Pre-Columbian Native American culture that existed from 1000 to 200 BC, in a time known as the Early Woodland period. It  was a conglomerate of  Indian communities that inhabited the Central and Southern regions of Ohio, West Virginia, and Delaware.    They shared a burial system known as mounds, many of which still exist today.  

In the mounds that have been excavated, the size of the bodies found buried in the mounds indicate that these people were uncommonly large. The bodies found were both men and women that were commonly over six feet tall with powerful builds. 

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I first met Tank Baird on a bus tour of the Nippenose Valley- where we were able to visit the Wii-Daagh (Capitol Column) Memorial.  

There's a video of Tank talking about that memorial, here:

https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-widaagh-monument-in-antes-fort.html

Additional Reading:

• North Central Chapter 8 Society For Pennyslvania Archaelogy 
• The Adena Culture
• Historic Indian Paths Of Pennsylvania By Paul Wallace