The Consol site is a Late Prehistoric stockaded village located 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) east of the Youghiogheny River in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.  The site is situated on a high hilltop saddle 380 feet in elevation higher than the river.  It is being excavated by a volunteer crew from the Westmoreland Archaeological Society, Chapter 23 of the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology.  Excavations started in the year 2000 and as of January 2008 there have been 4,100 one by one-meter squares recorded, mapped, and excavated by the field crew.  It is estimated that approximately 60% of the stockaded village has been excavated.

    The major component on the Consol site is a Late Prehistoric village that according to our nine C14 and two AMS assays, was occupied multiple times sometime between 1109 A.D. to 1452 A.D.  During these occupations, that we call the Early and Middle Monongahela time periods, we find evidence from the pottery and artifact analysis that Drew Tradition and Monongahela Tradition people occupied and lived in the village.  Currently we have recovered 211,000 artifacts during the excavation, which includes 872 rim sherds that are diagnostic of the above mentioned time periods.

     The Consol Late Prehistoric village was enclosed in 3 stockade lines of wooden posts that encircled the village in an elliptical pattern.  The inner stockade is related to one of the first organized villages on the site, the remaining 2 stockades are related to rebuilding or expansion of the village size sometime later, and are contemporaneous with each other. The double stockade lines are 3 meters apart as they encircle the village.

    The post mold patterns of nineteen round houses have been located inside the double stockade lines, and strangely one additional round house has been found outside the double stockades, which is hinting on another occupation.  Three of the nineteen round houses contain single short petal appendage attachments.  Seven detached post enclosed flat bottom features with troughs and long thin ent ranceways have been found that were apparently used for food storage behind some of the houses in food preparation areas.

     The field crew has logged 18,000 hours excavating in the field and 4,600 hours over the winter months in our archaeological lab washing, sorting, cataloging, inventorying artifacts, performing soil floatations and photographing artifacts.

     Prehistoric occupation of the site was not restricted to solely the Late Prehistoric time period. Evidence of usage of the hilltop saddle by earlier people can be seen as far back as the Early Archaic time period.  This is substantiated by the presence of Lecroy  points, which date to 6300 B.C.

Anyone wishing to tour the archaeological site may contact Bob Oshnock at oshnock@wpa.net 

A Sample of the Consol Collection

 Shell and Bone Beads

Additional Photos of the Consol Site and Artifacts

• Madison Points
• Smoking Pipe Fragements
• Ground Stone Artifacts
• Beads
• Chert Preforms
• Bone and Teeth
• Cannel Coal pendants 
• Clay Spheroids
• Reconstructed Turtle Shell Cup
• Six meter diameter round house with a red hearth burn on the subsoil clay in the center.
• Partially exposed 3.5 meter diameter round house
• A Monongahela House outlined by white stakes placed in excvated postmolds.
  
• Cross sectional view of Feature 419
• Pear shaped feature F195
• Feature 190 contained 500 neatly discarded freshwater shells.
• Three stockade lines on the southern portion of the Consol village
• Clay Pot Containing Maize
• A typical work day
• Overview  - A typical work day
• Soil Floatation
• Screening
• Southern Spring Springhead
  

© Westmoreland Archaeological Society, Inc. 2001-2008