Meadowcroft Rockshelter — Retrospect 1977: Part 1

Abstract

Meadowcroft Rockshelter is a deeply stratified multicomponent site in Washington County, southwestern Pennsylvania. The eleven well defined stratigraphic units identified at the site span at least 16,000, and perhaps 19,000 years of intermittent occupation by groups representing all of the major cultural stages/periods now recognized in northeastern North America. Throughout the extant sequence, the site served as a locus for hunting, collecting and food processing activities which involved the seasonal exploitation of the immediately adjacent Cross Creek valley and contiguous uplands. Presently, Meadowcroft Rockshelter represents the earliest well dated evidence of man in the New World as well as the longest occupational sequence in the Western Hemisphere.