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The Brook Run Site in Culpeper County Virginia, investigated recently by the Louis Berger Group for the Virginia Department of Transportation, may be one of the earliest dated Paleo-Indian occupations in the Middle Atlantic Region of the United States.
The site is located within proposed right-of-way for Route 3, near a bedrock outcrop of a high grade of jasper, raw material used by the inhabitants of the Brook Run site to make stone tools. Raw nodules of jasper, cores, core fragments, stone tools and the fragments of stone left over from their construction have been found at the site, in conjunction with a series of fire pits or hearths.
| A mined jasper seam emits a blue-green glow from an excavation wall at the Brook Run site. |
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Photo courtesy Virginia Department of Transportation
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Information recovered from the excavations suggests that the site was primarily a prehistoric jasper mine. The miners were a string of small hunter-gatherer bands living near Brook Run beginning at least as early as 11,000 years before the present and perhaps as early as 14,500 years ago, based on radiocarbon dates from hearths located within the site.
Excavations at the site reached over 3.5 meters in depth, and ongoing research is expected to recover detailed information on the lives of the Brook Run inhabitants.
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