Cumberland County Edition
March 2013
Vol. 14 No. 3
Unearthing History’s Underground Mysteries Local Archaeologist’s Work Benefits from Senior Volunteers By Lori Van Ingen Indiana Jones, eat your heart out. Central Pennsylvania native Steve Warfel has made his share of amazing archaeological finds, too. One of Warfel’s finds was a cobble with a face pecked on it that dates back to 2050 to 1770 B.C. He found it just off the shore of Piney Island, below the Holtwood Dam. It was found under water near a habitation layer with charred remains in a hearth, he said. The cobble is now on display at the State Museum of Pennsylvania. Another extraordinary discovery was a glass trumpet at Ephrata Cloister. Dating to the period around A.D. 1730, the German religious communal society, which was devoted to separating itself from the outside world, probably found the trumpet to be too ostentatious and it was disposed of in a trash pit, Warfel said. Warfel’s love of archaeology began when he stumbled across anthropology while attending Franklin & Marshall College as a pre-med major. When Warfel heard that the State Museum of Pennsylvania’s archaeologist needed extra helpers with his dig, he decided to get involved. “I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I had a little coursework under my belt,” he said. please see UNEARTHING page 14 Archaeologist Steve Warfel in front of Dill’s Tavern in Dillsburg, where he conducted an investigation for the Northern York County Historical and Preservation Society in summer 2011.
Inside:
How to Divvy Up Your Stuff page 8
He Survived 34 Days in a Lifeboat page 10