Fifteen Thousand Years of Prehistory at the Barton Site, Allegany County, Maryland

This presentation from Dr. Wall a professor of Archaeology at Towson University will explore the exciting work that has been done at the Baton Site in western Maryland. This site has yielded exceptional Archaeological information over the years and thanks to new technologies such as the Paleo Digger has been the site of incredible finds dating back 13,000 years to the Clovis a paleo-American culture.

The Barton site has been the focus of excavations for the last 30 years via field schools with Towson University and with the assistance of the Archeological Society of Maryland. In the 1990s, beginning with exploratory excavations of the Late Woodland components of the site, research has subsequently focused on the latest occupation, the Susquehannocks (ca. AD1600). This was followed by more recent excavations on the deepest part of the site, the Paleoindian (Clovis) component. The results of the excavations and artifacts recovered will be summarized for this presentation.

Robert Wall received his B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Maryland and his M.A. and Ph.D. at Catholic University. He teaches at Towson University where he has been teaching for more than 30 years. His research interests include Paleoindian and Archaic sites, Lithics and Ceramics, and Potomac and Susquehanna Valley prehistory. He has worked extensively in the Middle Atlantic region, mostly in Maryland and Pennsylvania with a focus in the last 3 decades on the Barton site, a multi-component stratified site in western Maryland.