Pot O’ History

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day and a leprechaun’s famous pot o’ gold, the Virtual Curation Unit would like to showcase an ancient Monongahela vessel found at the Martin site.

This vessel was recovered from salvage excavations at the Martin site, a Monongahela village located in Fayette County, Pennsylvania.  The salvage excavations occurred in 1941 because this region was to be flooded by construction of the Youghiogheny Reservoir.  This village site was first professionally explored by Edgar Augustine , who directed Work Projects Administration (WPA) excavations in adjacent Somerset County, Pennsylvania.  Augustine was to later help direct fieldwork at the site, under the direction of Francis Cresson, a Ph.D. student from Harvard.   The investigations were funded by the Pennsylvania Historical Commission, forerunner to today’s Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

For more on the Martin site, you can contact Dr. Bernard K. Means at bkmeans@vcu.edu for a copy of his 2010 article “Two Archaeological Sites in Fayette County, Pennsylvania.”  Pennsylvania Archaeologist 80 (1):1-16.