SRAC presents on DeSisti Site Excavations

The Susquehanna River Archaeological Center (SRAC), located at 345 Broad St. in Waverly, recently offered their first formal presentation of the results of the 2016 SRAC DeSisti Site Excavations at the 2017 The Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology’s (SPA) 88th Annual meeting.  

SRAC board members Dan Caister and Dr. DeeAnne Wymer presented the research poster, “2016 Excavations at the DeSisti Site (36BR20)”, authored by SRAC’s Dan Caister, DeeAnne Wymer, Tom Vallilee and Don Hunt, to the combined avocational and professional archaeology association on April 8 in Harrisburg.  

This annual meeting is a statewide event that brings together members of the SPA (both avocational and professional archaeologists), and is combined as well with the annual meeting for the professional archaeologists’ Pennsylvania Archaeology Council (PAC).  

The event took place over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning and consisted of a series of formal presentations by individuals, research posters in the book room on Saturday, primitive games contests, and a Saturday evening banquet with a guest lecture highlighting the meeting. 

Somewhere around 30 presentations were given and subjects ranged from historic sites, the application of new remote sensing technologies, battlefield archaeology, rock shelter materials, Paleo-Indian sites, and early Susquehannock language studies. 

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission hosted the conference, and representatives from the state museum, PennDot, ‘contract archaeology’ firms, many different colleges and universities, and various SPA chapters were present. 

The SRAC research poster summarized and visually presented the overall excavation methods, the pit features uncovered and documented, and a nice summation of the number and type of artifacts that were discovered during the excavations. This was also the first opportunity to reveal the radiocarbon dates to a larger, and quite interested audience.  

In addition, Caister also brought to the conference several of the larger, decorated pottery rim sherds and stone specimens to display on the poster table. 

“It was very gratifying to hear people with years of experience in Pennsylvania archaeology making suggestions for continuing our research and offering to provide technical support,” Caister said. The original research poster can be viewed at SRAC.

SRAC is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the education, research and preservation of the Native American studies in the region along the northern branch of the Susquehanna River and has many artifacts discovered from the first year excavation work at the Desisti site on display in their museum, which is free to visit Tuesday through Friday from 1 to 5 p.m., and on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.