by Bernard K. Means, Director of the Virtual Curation Laboratory (VCL)
Today’s animation is a chunkey stone that was excavated in 1939 or 1940 as part of work relief archaeology at the Fort Hill site, a Monongahela village in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. It is now within the archaeological collections of The State Museum of Pennsylvania (TSMP). Chunkey stones were used in the game of chunkey, where the goal was for two players to throw sticks close to where they expected the stone to come to rest after it had been rolled down a prepared court, without hitting the stone. This stone was damaged in play and repaired in the early 1940s for display. More information on the Work Projects Administration excavations at Fort Hill can be found here.
WPA excavations at Fort Hill. Image courtesy of The State Museum of Pennsylvania.
Virtual Curation Museum 