Troutman
Overview
Working from October 27, 1937 to January 20, 1938, a WPA crew excavated the Troutman site (36 So 9), which was located on an eastern spur of Big Savage Mountain. The site was not situated on level ground, but rather on a ridge that slopes gently to the northeast. This site is also located near a tributary stream to the Potomac River and may have acted as a link between the inhabitants of the Potomac River Valley and those that lived in the Upper Ohio Valley, where most Monongahela sites are located. Around half the dwellings at the Troutman site have been lost to erosion but this site, occupied ca. 1275 A.D., is notable for the largest number of human remains recorded from a single village site in Somerset County. A total of 50 individuals were documented in 48 graves. One grave contained the remains of three overlapping skeletons that represented three discrete burial episodes. The 23 existing dwellings at Troutman represent a population of 172 individuals and the total village population may have approached 350 people.
Winter excavations by a WPA crew at the Troutman Site.
Site Map
Site map of Troutman produced by Edgar Augustine in 1942.
Artifact Images
Click image for larger version.
Bone tools recovered
from Troutman
Bone tools and ornaments
recovered from Troutman
Bone beads recovered
from Troutman
Tobacco pipes and stems
recovered from Troutman
Illustration in field
records of tobacco
pipes recovered
from Troutman
Shell beads and ornaments
recovered from Troutman
Site Scenes
All images derived from original field notes dating to 1937 or 1938. Click image for larger version.
Road to Troutman
in winter
WPA field crew
at Troutman
Excavating at Troutman
Excavating at Troutman
Excavating at Troutman
Excavating at Troutman
Excavating at Troutman
Winter excavations
at Troutman
Winter excavations
at Troutman
Winter excavations
at Troutman
Sticks placed in palisade
postholes covered by
snow at Troutman
Sticks placed in palisade
postholes covered by
snow at Troutman
Sticks placed in palisade
postholes covered by
snow at Troutman
Sticks placed in postholes
of a post-enclosed storage
pit at Troutman
References
Augustine, Edgar
1938a Recent Discoveries in Somerset County. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 8 (1):6-12.
1938b Indian Fortifications in Somerset County. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 8 (2):41-45.
Hart, John P.
1993 Monongahela Subsistence-Settlement Change: The Late Prehistoric Period in the Lower Upper Ohio Valley. Journal of World Prehistory 7:71-120.
Means, Bernard K.
1998 Archaeological Past and Present: Field Methodology from 1930s Relief Excavations in Somerset County, Pennsylvania and its Relevance to Modern Archaeological Interpretations. Journal of Middle Atlantic Archaeology 14:39-63. Available online.
1999 Monongahela Mortuary Practices in Somerset County, Pennsylvania: Observations and Implications. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 69 (2):15-44.
2000 Toward a Model of Monongahela Village Community Organization: Analyzing Pit Feature Data Recovered from the 1934 to 1940 Somerset County Relief Excavations. North American Archaeologist 21 (1):35-61.
2005a New Dates for New Deal Excavated Monongahela Villages in Somerset County. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 75 (1):49-61.
2005b Late Woodland Villages in the Allegheny Mountains Region of Southwestern Pennsylvania: Temporal and Social Implications of New Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Dates. Uplands Archaeology in the East VII and IX, edited by Carole L. Nash and Michael B. Barber, pp. 13-23. Archeological Society of Virginia Special Publication 38-7.
2006 Circular Reasoning: Drawing on Models of Ring-shaped Village Spatial Layouts To Examine Villages in Late Prehistoric Pennsylvania. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor.
2006b The social implications of a new method for estimating the number of residents within Monongahela houses from their floor areas. Journal of Middle Atlantic Archaeology 22: 31-50.
2007 Circular Villages of the Monongahela Tradition. The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.