Overview: Lithic quarries in Pennsylvania: the archaeology of tool stone procurement

As the material with which archaeologists are perhaps most familiar, stone—its origins, procurement and processing into tools—has had an abiding interest The articles in this set of papers, presented in two successive numbers of the journal, outline some of the history of archaeological studies on quarries. Suffice it to say here that studies of where and how people obtained the stone needed for tools and utensils date to the earliest stages of the discipline's professional development. The pioneering work of Holmes (1890a, 1890b, 1892, 1897) at the Piney Branch quartzite quarries in Washington, DC, and Mercer (1894) in the Delaware Valley in the nineteenth century may be cited as representative. More recently, the edited volume by Ericson and Purdy (1984) continued archaeologists’ attempts to systematize the study of quarries and lithic production systems worldwide. In Pennsylvania and the Middle Atlantic region, specifically, the work of Hatch and Miller (1985) and Carr and associates (e.g. Carr and McLearen, 2005, and this issue) at the Reading Prong jasper quarries in Pennsylvania, Stewart (1987) at metarhyolite quarries in the Great Valley of Maryland and Pennsylvania, and Ebright (1987) at the Robesonia quartzite quarries in Berks County, Pennsylvania, are noteworthy.

The topic for these papers, originally presented at the 2016 symposium of the Pennsylvania Archaeological Council and later at a session at the annual meeting of the Eastern States Archaeological Federation, was prompted by the sense that there had been a fair amount of recent archaeological work on various aspects of quarries and quarrying in Pennsylvania and the Middle Atlantic region that had advanced our understanding of early quarrying and production systems and was worthwhile summarizing. The authors sought to report on their own work and place it in the context of previous studies of quarries and models of quarry organization, as well as landscape studies.

R. Michael Stewart provides an anthropological context for understanding quarry activities. He begins by noting that our knowledge of raw lithic material sources is scattered and disorganized and that archaeologists have a pressing needs for basic documentation of the distribution and character of various tool stones, “encyclopedic compilations” of the occurrence and qualities of available materials that are currently obtainable only from widely scattered theses, CRM reports, unpublished reports and site files. Stewart himself has gone some way to achieving this aim with his recent summary of the Upper Delaware Valley data (Stewart, 2018–2019). As Stewart notes, the absence of comprehensive and systematic data frustrates the development of reliable quarry production models. As an example, the lack of consistent descriptions of material color variation complicates the identification of quarry sources and models of material choice based on color and texture, the symbolic significance and social meaning of which are amply documented in the ethnographic literature. Likewise, without comprehensive catalogs of materials, we are poorly equipped to evaluate common propositions that see quarries as “common ground” and to judge what that might mean in terms of direct procurement or the degree to which procurement is embedded in other culturally defined movements. Addressing these and other anthropological issues will require a firmer foundation for our data.

Brian Fritz brings his focus to the individual quarry, while noting that understanding specific quarrying activity is critical to explicating the broader landscape of material use. Fritz defines various quarry types and relates those to the degree of specialization evident in quarry activity, then summarizes a number of models of quarry development and activity zone use. He then proposes a classification scheme for quarry development that is partly based on historical quarrying in the Eastern United States, differentiating boulder, open ledge, and pit quarries. With appropriate modifications this classification can be applied to pre-Contact Native American quarries and is consonant with earlier classification models like that of Hatch (1993). The boulder-ledge-pit scheme also allows researchers to evaluate the intensity and plan of quarry development, as Fritz has done at the Finch Quarry site in the Hudson Valley Lowlands of New York state. This work can serve as a model for investigating the geological and cultural constraints operating in the development of other quarry sites.

Lewis applies his experience with the procurement of quartz as a tool stone to review what we know about the planned procurement, transport, and use of quartz. While so abundant that it is commonly considered ubiquitous, Lewis points out that we can trace the favored use of specific high-quality sources and identify patterns of quarrying and transport. Rather than being random or adventitious, quartz procurement was often targeted and embedded in a network of culturally defined schedules and patterns of group movement. Despite the paucity of systematic investigations of quartz-dominant sites, Lewis proposes that a careful study of such sites will allow archaeologists to identify likely sources and patterns of quartz transport.

Raber suggests that we broaden our definition of what constitutes a quarry to recognize that materials like quartzite were regularly obtained from both primary sources like quarried outcrops and secondary (stream cobble) sources. He compares and contrasts the results of investigations at a small camp site in central Pennsylvania where high-quality Tuscarora formation quartzite was regularly obtained from a nearby outcrop over the course of thousands of years, with those from a similar small site on the Susquehanna River where stream-deposited cobbles of Tuscarora quartzite were the main source of the material as well as other tool stone materials like diabase. Raber proposes that the choice of quartzite sources and the long-term use of these sites is best seen as reflecting their roles as persistent places (Schlanger, 1992) on the landscape, places that offered some distinctive natural or cultural qualities or features over long time spans. Conceiving of quarry sites as persistent places emphasizes the role of culturally transmitted knowledge in landscape use, of the importance of “dwelling in the landscape” (Ingold, 1993) to past residents.

Carr, et al., present the results of several recent studies of the use of the jasper at the King's Quarry in Berks County, Pennsylvania. These results update the earlier work of Hatch (1993) and others (Hatch and Miller, 1985) at the jasper quarries of the Reading Prong in eastern Pennsylvania. These studies fulfill the need Stewart discussed for detailed compilations of data, expanding on the previous mapping of quarry pits completed by Hatch (1993) with data from several subsequent studies on pit locations and profiles. The collective results allow Carr and associates to date and reconstruct the techniques of quarrying over the 11,000 year span of site use, and also to characterize the full variety of jasper color and texture in material from the quarry. They were able to identify activity areas at the quarry, loci of both extraction and preliminary processing. On this basis they re-classify the quarry as a Class III site—with evidence of extensive and intensive quarrying, as well as core and biface reduction—rather a Class II quarry as Hatch (1993) had initially proposed. They believe they can document a progression from Stage I quarrying by Paleoindians of surficial deposits, to Stage II excavation of deeper pits in the Archaic period, to a peak in the intensity of quarry use during the Transitional (Terminal Archaic) period, followed by re-mining of backfilled deposits during the Late Woodland period. Their work illustrates the benefits of continued intensive investigation in illuminating the time depth and complexity of quarrying.

Murtha and Scheetz revisit the Bald Eagle jasper quarries in central Pennsylvania first studied by James Hatch and his students (Andrews et al., 2004). Excavations there collected over 27,000 jasper artifacts and identified 16 cultural features associated with jasper procurement. In contrast to the situation at the King's Quarry site just summarized, the Tudek site proved to be solely a material procurement (Hatch's Class II; extraction and initial processing) site, with evidence for the use of weathered jasper float rather than an outcrop, and preliminary heat treatment of the treated material prior to its transport to nearby camps. The use of float reinforces the need noted by Raber to consider broader definitions of “quarry” that include raw materials in secondary context. Radiocarbon dating of some of the work areas suggests a peak in the intensity of use during a 1000 year span (ca. 500 BC - AD 1500) in the Early and Middle Woodland periods, substantially later than that documented at King's Quarry.

All of these papers represent a continuing effort to provide some of the basic descriptive data on quarries requested by Stewart, and to define the geological and cultural parameters of past quarrying activities, while attempting to relate those data to patterns of human behavior and agency. The papers contribute to our knowledge of regional quarry use while engaging issues of broader anthropological interest As a fundamental aspect of human relations to the natural and cultural environment, quarrying merits continued study of the sort presented in these papers.