For 10 years, Vernon archaeologist Rick Patterson walked the cornfields, row by row, looking at every speck, every piece of chert that protruded from the plowed fields on Maple Grange Road. First one, then two, then twenty artifacts surfaced. Stone tools, arrowheads, spear points, pottery sherds-and the celebrated effigy stone that would ten years later sit on a table in a courtroom and play a prominent role in preserving the site-emerged. As the years went by, nearly 5,000 artifacts were found in the corn rows of the north and south fields and surface-collected. They were carefully documented in ledgers, telling a story-the story of prehistory and the people who occupied the Black Creek site. During the same time, the state replaced the Maple Grange Road Bridge at the northern end of the Black Creek Site. There, during a cultural resource study, an additional 10,000 artifacts were found, including rare glass trade beads and Vinette One pottery. During the course of Patterson's intense site study, he found artifacts from virtually every single culture from the Early Archaic Period to the Contact Period when Native Americans met with Europeans. On a balmy spring morning in 1998, however, the course of history was about to change. Patterson invited his friend Jessica Paladini to visit the Black Creek site. Paladini, an educator and former newspaper editor, knew the site was significant from all he had told her, but after only one visit seeing was believing. In the few hours spent there, she herself found a Lackawaxen spearpoint and a stone tool.

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On that day, Patterson and Paladini knew the time would come when they would wage a battle to protect the site from destruction. That day came in May 2001 when the Township of Vernon, which had purchased the 182-acre tract for a recreation complex and municipal park, dispatched a bulldozer to the heart of the site to destroy it for ball field construction. Having heard the bulldozer was sent to the site, Patterson and Paladini, with the help of Native Americans, drafted a lawsuit. The plaintiffs, Rick Patterson and the Nanticoke Lenni Lenape of New Jersey, filed the pro se lawsuit the next morning with the Superior Court of New Jersey, seeking an injunction to stop the destruction of the site. New Jersey Superior Court Judge Kenneth MacKenzie recognized the historical and cultural significance of the site and granted immediate relief, ordering the township to shut down the bulldozer. MacKenzie stopped all work on the site until the New Jersey Historic Preservation Office made a determination on listing the site on the Register of Historic Places.

What transpired from the filing of the lawsuit to the day New Jersey Department of Environmental Commissioner Bradley Campbell sealed the preservation of the Black Creek Native American site has itself been monumental and will take a page in history. The site is now listed on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places and has been forwarded to the keeper of the National Register of Historic Places for listing. The forty-acre parcel of land where more than 15,000 Native American artifacts, pottery, and stone tools representing 10,000 years of history and culture of native peoples were discovered has been saved from destruction, honoring New Jersey's indigenous people. The Black Creek site is considered one of the most important archaeological and cultural sites in the tri-state area. Archaeologists confirm the site was inhabited continuously by the Lenape and other Native Americans for more than 10,000 years before European settlers forced them from the area in the 1600-1700s. Artifacts found at the site date back to the Early Archaic Period, around 8,000 BC, to the Late Woodland Period of the 1600-1700s, the time of contact with Europeans.

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When the governing body of Vernon Township repeatedly refused the pleas of Paladini to save the site, she began an intensive search for Native American people who might assist in the preservation effort. Searching the Internet and the libraries for weeks, she finally found the Nanticoke Lenni Lenape Indians of Bridgeton, N.J. The Lenape came to Vernon and toured the site. Instantly, they knew it was an important cultural resource and had to be protected. Through the good fortune of Fred Werkheiser, a Pennsylvania historian who discovered stone cairns and mounds throughout his state, they were led to his nephew Gregory Werkheiser, an attorney with the prestigious law firm of Piper Rudnick. Piper Rudnick agreed to give pro bono representation to the Lenape to save the site. Just out of law school, Gregory Werkheiser successfully led the preservation team.

His hours of dedication and perseverance led to the December 5, 2001, decision of the New Jersey Historic Review Board to list the site on the state's Register of Historic Places. In a room filled with more than 100 Native Americans from New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania and the preservation team from Vernon, N.J., the review board agreed unanimously that the site was significant. The historic review board made the recommendation to then NJDEP Commissioner Robert Shinn to list the site. Forty-five days later, at the end of his tenure, Commissioner Shinn listed only half of the site and remanded a hotly contested portion of it back to the review board for further consideration. In February 2002, Bradley Campbell was appointed to the position of NJDEP Commissioner.

In April 2002, Campbell listed the remainder of the site to the New Jersey Register of Historic Places. In listing the site, Commissioner Campbell said, "This is one of very few sites that recognize the presence and historic significance of New Jersey's original indigenous people. The department [NJDEP] felt strongly that we ought to protect those resources." Mark Gould, chief of the Nanticoke Lenni Lenape Indians of New Jersey, said, "Native people from New Jersey to California celebrate this great victory for the preservation of our human heritage." The Black Creek Site is one of only four Native American sites on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places. More than 1,600 sites on the register represent European and colonial influence.

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DESCRIPTION AND RESEARCH

Artifacts from Black Creek Site

The Black Creek site occupies a 40-acre peninsular landform within the Vernon Valley. The landform extends into a former postglacial lakebed, and it was recurrently utilized by Native Americans during the past 10,000 years. The site is within a relict landscape near extensive chert outcrops within the Vernon Valley at the edge of the Jersey highlands. Since the initial habitation of the site by Native Americans, the geography of the area has changed little. However, the ecology has changed considerably from periglacial tundra and spruce forest to the climax deciduous and evergreen forest of about. A.D. 1700. The evolving cultural phases of regional Native American populations from about 8000 B.C. to A.D. 1700 that are represented by artifacts recovered from the site are listed below. Controlled surface collection, controlled hand excavation and studies of artifacts recovered from the Black Creek site have yielded important information regarding past Native American use of the Vernon Valley and beyond. Excavated portions of the site have encountered deeply stratified artifact deposits going back at least to early in the Middle Archaic period. These studies also indicate considerable potential for this site to yield additional important information as outlined in the Statement of Significance.

The Black Creek site is a 40-acre Native American archaeological site situated on a peninsular landform within a small, isolated valley in northwestern New Jersey. The physiographic features of the valley made this peninsular landform, which in the past was at the edge of a postglacial lake, an attractive location for settlement throughout most of the Holocene period. Cultural cross-dating of artifact styles represented by artifacts recovered from the site indicate it was occupied time and again during the past 10,000 years.

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The supporting bedrock is sedimentary dolomite which is exposed in places along the eastern side of the site where it serves as a bedrock buffer to the Black Creek, which forms the eastern boundary of the site. The site soils derive from this dolomite bedrock as well as from glaciolacustrine sediments, which cap the bedrock. Portions of the site extend from the peninsular landform eastward and northward into the Black Creek flood plain. There, former glacial lake bed and marsh soils form a black muck with anaerobic properties that allow for the preservation of organic materials such as bone. The variation in on-site soils, slopes, exposures, and moisture content would have allowed a wide variety of tree species and herbaceous plants to thrive throughout the Holocene before the land was cleared for farming. During early postglacial times that witnessed the first known Native American use of northern New Jersey, ecological succession in the Black Creek valley evolved from tundra to spruce forest to pine-dominant forest. More recently, black walnut, butternut, white oak, sycamore, yellow poplar, and red cedars became established. The extensive wetland perimeter of the site is ideal habitat for red (swamp) maples, black (swamp) ash, river birch, ironwood, and associated marsh plants, including cattails and sedges. Surrounding the Black Creek site are the granite peaks of the Jersey Highlands rising a thousand feet above the valley floor. The extensive dry-mesic mountain slopes support a vast forest of oaks, hickories, and (until the early 20th century) American Chestnut. The mountaintops are covered in pines and hemlocks. A vast suite of floral and faunal resources was available within a two-hour foraging radius. Rapid sedimentation filling of the postglacial lake beginning around 1500 B.C. changed the area surrounding the site to one of swamp forest. Sedimentation and slope wash movement of soils on the site has covered and preserved archaeological deposits in places and contributed to minor filling of a small calcareous fen (wetland bog). Soil mining (for glacial sand and gravels) has altered the land surface southwest of the site in modern times; however, the flood plain characteristics of the land surrounding the site has prevented modern construction, such as subdivisions, from encroaching on the site and its physical setting.

Archaeological investigations at nearby sites indicate Paleo-Indian groups were the first to enter the valley of the Black Creek and utilize the extensive resources. Use of the Black Creek site during the Early Archaic period (ca. 8000 - 5000 B.C.) is evidenced by in-situ and surface finds of distinctive, bifurcated base, chipped stone dart points. Occupation of the site continued, probably intermittently, from that time onward to the Contact period (ca. A.D. 1675). Following the last known Native American use of the site by a Contact period group of the Lenni Lenapes, the entire mountain and valley region was transferred to a group of English land speculators. On March 5, 1703, seven sachems of the Lenape more or less unwittingly "sold" 250,000 acres of land in southern Orange County, New York, and northern Sussex County, New Jersey. Much of the Black Creek site eventually came under cultivation and a 19th century wagon lane (now Maple Grange Road) crossed the end of a field and angled down to the flood plain east of the Black Creek site. The remains of this lane are only visible within the southeastern end of the site where the slope was cut away to grade the lane. Maple Grange Road was subsequently relocated at the sharp bend and crossed Black Creek over an iron truss bridge at the tip of the peninsula. A single house was constructed (ca. 1962) next to and south of the bridge over Black Creek, impacting a small portion of the Black Creek site.

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In 1999, the New Jersey Department of Transportation built a replacement bridge across the creek. This construction was preceded by a cultural resource investigation of the project site, which resulted in the identification of the portion of the site within the road right-of-way as eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. An archaeological data recovery excavation was conducted within the bridge impact area by Louis Berger and Associates Cultural Resource Group (LBA). None of the buildings or structures associated with the historic period, Euro-American farms that tilled portions of the site, appear to have been constructed within the boundaries of the site. At present, the Black Creek site mainly contains wooded areas, fallow fields, and wetlands. The fields, located at the southern half of the site, have been periodically cultivated in the past.

Plowing, planting, and cultivating agricultural fields affects horizontal and vertical distributions of near-surface artifact deposits to some degree. These effects, like effects from natural soil disturbances processes, vary in relation to the depth and density of artifact and feature deposits. In many cases, tillage effects can be factored into artifact distribution analyses so that sampled plow zone artifact deposits (e.g., controlled surface observations and collections) can yield important information. Farming of the two cultivated fields within the site was discontinued in 1998. The bulk of the site was purchased in 2000 by the Township of Vernon as part of a 180-acre acquisition. Avocational archaeologist Rick Patterson's controlled surface collections in the southern portion of the site and LBA's excavation at the northern end of the site provided the basis for the nomination of the Black Creek site to the state and national Registers of Historic Places. Patterson recognized the Black Creek site as an excellent candidate for an artifact field mapping project because of the large volume of artifacts distributed over a very wide area of cultivated land. The site was assessed as having potential to provide important information in a nonintrusive manner.

The field mapping project was confined to two adjacent agricultural fields (one, the north field, was not plowed during several years of the study) and was comprehensive from the outset. Not just complete projectile points, but all recognized stone tools, tool fragments, and potsherds were bagged and their locations mapped. Each time an artifact was collected, its location within each field was estimated by pacing and triangulation with reference to prominent trees along the field margins. Then that location was plotted on the field map. Many artifacts were collected that were passed over by others who were surface collecting the site at the time. To achieve as complete an inventory as possible, the first few years also included a sampling of chipped stone flaking debris. Feedback from the study suggested additional items to be field mapped when they were located, notably chipped stone flaking debris of jasper, and green and red cherts which became recognized as rare, and small pebble hammerstones. The study became increasingly labor-intensive, reaching the stage where every item except very small pieces of chipped stone flaking debris and fire-cracked rock were hand held and examined with the unaided eye for evidence of use. Each collected artifact was placed in a plastic bag with its identification number. The approximate location of recovery was marked on a field map along with the artifact number. Each field had its own field map, and several maps were used each year as they became crowded with numbers. The field mapping study potential of the site also rested on the large volume of artifacts exposed on the surface. Minor errors in a large data set are not likely to result in critically flawed inferences as they can with a small data set. After an initial combined collection, artifacts where registered on separate BIFACE and OTHER TOOL master maps with new maps for each plowing year. Assembly of the map series into a composite map locating hundreds of artifacts in their proper concentrations in each field was the achieved goal.

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Late Woodland projectile points from Black Creek Site

Initial recognition of the potential for a large volume of artifacts to yield meaningful results also brought recognition of the shear volume of objects to be catalogued. Each artifact from the field was gently washed in clean water. Artifact labeling followed a four-step procedure. A swipe of clear nail polish was applied to one side of the artifact. Then after drying, a swipe of white liquid paper was applied. The site number and artifact number were then written with permanent ink, and then after dry, another coat of clear nail polish was used to seal the number. Wherever possible, each artifact received the complete Smithsonian Trinomial System designation for the site and its unique artifact number. A multiple column accounting ledger was used to record catalog numbers and artifact descriptions with emphasis on description of the artifacts, material, use-wear, and damage over typological classification. The study focused on collection and control of data from the site with the expectation that laboratory review and analysis would begin when the controlled surface collection concluded. That stage began with point typological classification at the Sheffield Archaeological Laboratory in September 2000, and is expected to include computerized spatial analyses of temporally and functionally diagnostic artifacts for portions of the site where controlled surface collections were carried out.



STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE
The Black Creek site represents an important interchange of human behavior and technology over a long span of time within a culturally little understood region of New Jersey. The Black Creek site, together with the surrounding chert quarries and abundant biotic resources, bears exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition that has virtually disappeared. The cultural landscape surrounding and including the Black Creek site "represents the combined works of nature and man . . . illustrative of the evolution of human society and settlement over time, under the influence of the physical constraints and/or opportunities presented by the natural environment and of successive social, economic, and cultural forces, both external and internal." It is this value that evinces the site's eligibility under National Register Criteria A and D. Archaeological data recovery at the northern end of the Black Creek has yielded important information regarding various facets of evolving Native American lifeways during a 10,000 year span of time.

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It is posited that the Black Creek site, by virtue of its location, evolved into a hub of prehistoric human activity within the valley of the Black Creek. Bifurcated base, chipped stone dart points recovered from a buried topsoil zone at the northern end of the site, and from the surface toward the southern end of the site, indicate Native Americans began using the site by early in the Middle Archaic period. Analysis of distributions and densities of temporally diagnostic artifacts recovered from two tilled fields in the southern half of the site indicate continued use of the site with generally increasing intensity through the Late Woodland period. The Black Creek site occupation extends into the Contact period, providing an archaeological window into this little understood period within the Jersey Highlands region. It is further proposed that as the central habitation complex within the valley, the Black Creek site served as a focal point of Native American subsistence pursuits, settlement behavior, and social activities. Nearby bedrock outcrops of chert less than one mile distant were surface mined to provide abundant material with which the inhabitants of the site fashioned projectile points and many other sorts of stone tools. The material remains of the manufacturing processes employed by Native American cultures at the Black Creek site can be used to gain a better understanding of the lithic reduction strategies employed by different cultures to produce a wide variety of point styles and tool types. The classifiable, locally available chert resources in combination with evidence from the site for lithic preference shifts through time indicate a capacity to provide important new information regarding Native American lithic material reduction and manufacturing strategies. From the Black Creek site, people walked or canoed into the adjacent valley and mountain areas to exploit a wide variety of resources.

The authors have registered 12 other Native American sites within the valley with the New Jersey State Museum, several more have been registered by others, and another 20 or so are known but have not yet been registered. It appears, based on our observations of surface artifact distributions and temporally diagnostic artifacts on these others sites, that by the middle of the Late Archaic period, use of the valley had reached its most intensive level, and the centrally located Black Creek Site was the largest of the sites. It is proposed that an extensive web of campsites was established in a variety of habitats at that time, and it became a web of traditional outlying camps used for several thousand years, forming an integral extension of the core settlement at the Black Creek site. This proposition can be tested through comparative analyses of data collected from artifacts recovered from the Black Creek site and the hypothesized associated campsites. The information potential of the outlier sites in this context is thus enhanced. The Black Creek site, if it proves to be the heart of this complex web of related sites, would be eligible under Criterion A because it was a socio-religious center of the Native American population of this region. It clearly is eligible per Criterion D because it has yielded and has additional potential to yield important new information about pre-contact and Contact period Native American use of the Black Creek valley and surrounding portions of the Highlands of northern New Jersey and southern New York. Facets of the site significance are explored below. They have been separated for ease of review; however, they are all interrelated and dependent on the evolving geophysical, population density, and ecological conditions in the valley of the Black Creek during the past 12,000 years.

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Time Periods, Named Archaeological Units, and Temporally Diagnostic Artifact Types Represented by Artifacts Recovered from the Black Creek site

Contact period (ca. 1600 to 1750):
Minisink phase

Late Woodland period (ca. A.D. 700 to 1600):
Pahaquarra (Owasco) phase

Middle Woodland period (ca. 200 B.C. to A.D. 700):
Jacks Reef/Point Peninsula
Fox Creek
Rossville

Early Woodland period (ca. 1000 to 200 B.C.):
Meadowood

Late Archaic period (ca. 3500 to 1000 B.C.):
Lackawaxen
Orient/Dry Brook
Poplar Island
Bare Island
Perkiomen
Susquehanna
Normanskill
Genesee
Lamoka

Middle Archaic period (ca. 5500 to 3500 B.C.):
Brewerton
Vosburg
Kittatinny
Stanly/Bifurcate

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