Shawnee-Minisink is located on the confluence of the Delaware River and Brodhead creek on the Pennsylvania and New Jersey border. In was inhabited the Paleo-Indians as long ago as 10,937 +/-15 14C B.P. This site is one of about two dozen in the United States of America. They traveled into the Americas by crossing the Bering Strait which then was a land and ice bridge called Beringia. The Paleo-Indians then made their way south and east and some of them ended up at Shawnee-Minisink. This site consists of two hearths, and tens of thousands of artifacts from that time period. Most of the artifacts recovered are floral and faunal remains that were at one point in or around the fire. This gave researchers a good look in to what was growing in the …show more content…
These artistic expressions can also be interpreted as the first evidence of symbolic behavior, our ability to use symbols is one of the indications that makes us distinctively human. During the first excavation of Shawnee-Minisink, researchers recovered an “incised river pebble” (Gingerish 2010: 377) that has been found in very few sites across the Americas. The pebble which had to be photographed under a microscope showed three distinct lines with even spacing, starting near each other and then dispersing as you get to the bottom of the engraving. Some would say it resembles a bird claw. The two outside lines have a v-shaped groove and the middle line a u-shaped groove. This may be because the tool was worn by the time the middle line was drawn. After much experimentation, it was concluded that these lines were made purposefully and not accidentally because they could not be recreated by dropping one rock on another, or accidentally rubbing two rocks together etc. There are only five sites in North American for comparison to engraved cobbles or stones in Paleoindian contexts (Gingerich 2010:387) which makes this site incredibly