16,000-year-old cave dwelling now easier visit for tourists

Akron Beacon Journal (MCT) - Meadowcroft is a word very familiar to archaeologists and less to tourists. But that could be changing.

The world-famous Meadowcroft Rockshelter, a rock overhang southwest of Pittsburgh, has reshaped thought on what prehistoric people first came to North America and when.

Now the cave is striving to become a bigger tourist draw.

Improvements costing $1.3 million include a wooden roof that better protects the archaeological site and a wooden deck that improves accessibility for visitors.

The site reopened last May with the improvements in place. It had been closed in 2007.

Previously, views of the dig were poor and the site _ a National Historic Landmark _ could handle only a few visitors at a time. Public tours were not offered until 2003.

The Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Museum of Rural Life operates in association with the Senator John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's largest history museum.

Meadowcroft draws people familiar with its story. Visitors are shown a seven-minute video about the archaeological site, which is believed to be the earliest site of human habitation in North America.

Then you drive your car down the hill and climb 95 steps to the rock shelter itself. There, a guide turns overhead stage lights on and off to show where certain features are found and to explain a little bit of the Meadowcroft story. You get to look at the hole in the ground from two angles for about 10 minutes. Then the $10 tour abruptly ends.

The site, used by Ice Age hunters around 14,000 B.C., is not overly big. The rock shelter is about 50 feet wide and 20 feet deep, with a ceiling about 48 feet above. It was larger before stones from the ceiling fell to the cave's floor.

You can see reddish stains that mark fire pits, and the guide points out deer bones and mussel shells that stick out of the layers of dirt that were carefully excavated.

Hundreds of circular tags still stick out of the soil to mark age and location within the dig.

The feeling I got from a summer visit was that I was looking at a sophisticated stage set or a three-dimensional sculpture or a museum exhibit. We could look, but we couldn't touch.

However, Meadowcroft has a very compelling and interesting story that could be better told and explained to casual visitors.

Meadowcroft was used 16,000 years ago as a temporary campsite by Paleo-Indians, making it the oldest archaeological site in North America.

It faces to the south, catches breezes and sits 50 feet above Cross Creek, which flows into the Ohio River. There are two springs for drinking water.

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The story of Meadowcroft begins in 1955, when landowner Albert Miller stumbled across a groundhog hole.

He used a shovel to enlarge the hole and came across a flint knife, burnt bone and flint. He filled in the hole and began a search for archaeologists to excavate the overhang.

In 1973, Dr. James Adovasio, then at the University of Pittsburgh, began excavating the Meadowcroft Rockshelter.

Adovasio and his crew excavated layer after layer and eventually found stone tools and evidence of fire pits. In places, the excavations went down 10 to 15 feet.

The site yielded the largest collection of plant and animal remains in a single place in North America. The site has produced 20,000 human artifacts, 956,000 animal bones and 1.4 million plant remains.

Meadowcroft artifacts include man-made objects of stone, animal bones and wood, remains of 149 animal species, and plant remains, including seeds, fruits, pollen, wood and charcoal.

Evidence has been found of deer, elk, turkey, grouse, nuts, berries, corn, squash and freshwater mussels.

The most common evidence uncovered was reddish-stained fire pits and large burned areas of fire floors, refuse and storage pits, concentrations of stone artifacts, ceramic pottery and bone suggesting specialized work areas and roasting pits.

Tools uncovered include awls made from the bones of deer and turkey, bone fishhooks, bone- and-wood snare triggers and bones used to scrape the flesh off hides. Other items include bone beads and bone buttons.

More artifacts found include baskets made from birch bark, woven mats, 33 species of corn and flaked stone projectile points.

The rock shelter was never a permanent settlement. There is no evidence of burials, human remains or permanent fixtures.

The evidence indicates that Meadowcroft was a camp used primarily in the autumn.

About two-thirds of the Meadowcroft site has been excavated.

None of the materials uncovered is on display at Meadowcroft, although such an exhibit is in the works, officials said.

The Pennsylvania excavations directed by Adovasio, now at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., continued through 1978 and then again in 1983, 1985 and 1987. There has been limited excavation in the 1990s and the 2000s.

Adovasio sent samples to the Smithsonian Institution for radiocarbon dating. Those tests determined that humans had lived there as early as 16,000 years ago.

What made that significant is that most archaeologists had believed that artifacts from Clovis, N.M., marked the first human occupation of North America.

But the evidence from southwest Pennsylvania went back 4,000 years before the New Mexico evidence. That forced archaeologists to rethink their theories on the settling of North America and South America.

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Archaeologists have new evidence of earlier settlement of the Americas in excavations at Cactus Hill near Richmond, Va., and at Monte Verde, Chile. That suggests that the Western Hemisphere may have been settled by seafaring peoples, not people crossing from Asia to Alaska on foot.

There is more than the rock overhang at Meadowcroft. Visitors will find pioneer and Indian villages.

Meadowcroft was founded by brothers Albert (1911-1999) and Delvin (1913-1996) Miller. Delvin was a breeder, trainer and driver of Standardbred horses. Albert farmed the land that had been in the Miller family since 1795.

The brothers purchased 200 acres from a coal company. It had been mined in the 1930s and 1940s and then abandoned.

They opened a youth camp in the early 1960s and began moving historical buildings to the site.

In 1969, Meadowcroft Village opened with 20 rural buildings from the 1800s.

Its attractions include a log cabin, a covered bridge, a one- room school, a blacksmith shop, a 1941 barbershop, a caboose, farm implements and a log church.

Hours: Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m. and Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m. in September, October and May; Wednesdays through Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m. and Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m. Memorial Day through Labor Day.

The 17th-century woodlands Indian camp was still being developed during my July visit.

Admission is $10 for adults, $9 for senior citizens and $5 for children 6 to 16. Children younger than 6 are admitted free.

Meadowcroft is 34 miles from Pittsburgh

For information, write to Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Museum of Rural Life, 401 Meadowcroft Road, Avella, Pa. 15312; 724-587-3412; www.pghhistory.org/meadowcroft.

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Bob Downing: bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com

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© 2008, Akron Beacon Journal (Akron, Ohio).