The Blackrock Springs Site in Shenandoah National Park

Located in Augusta County, Virginia, within Shenandoah National Park, the Blackrock Springs Site is an archaeological area near the source of Paine Run. Discovered during a survey in the early 1970s, the site measures approximately 150 by 60 metres and is about 5 centimetres deep. It was occupied during an exceptionally long period, beginning before 7000 BC and continuing until after 1000 BC.

Among the earliest artifacts found at the site is a St. Albans-related projectile point, though the most intensive uses date from the middle to late Archaic period. Of the three thousand items catalogued, approximately 98% were pieces of locally obtained quartzite. These items were found in small clusters rather than being spread evenly across the area.

Because of this chronological distribution and the nature of the artifacts, investigators concluded that millennia of tribesmen in the Shenandoah Valley and the Piedmont used the site as a base camp for occasional hunting and gathering on the mountainside. The site's archaeological value led to its listing on the National Register of Historic Places in December 1985, along with the Paine Run shelter and site 44-AU-154.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons