Late Prehistoric Petroleum Collection in Pennsylvania: Radiocarbon Evidence

Previous reports using archaeological, ethnohistoric, and historic data have proposed that petroleum was extracted by pre-contact aboriginal populations in western Pennsylvania employing wood-lined pits. A suite of AMS-based 14C analyses on total amino acid extracts on nine duplicate samples from a homogenized decadal (10-year) sample of wood taken from a single stake removed from a pit feature at Drake Well Park, Titusville, Pennsylvania, has permitted the calibration of a mean 14C age of 480 ± 15 B.P. to a 2 sigma (95.4%) confidence interval of A.D. 1415-1440. An early fifteenth-century age for this feature supports the view that petroleum exploitation in this region occurred during Late Woodland times.