Lawrenz Rising: Preliminary Assessment of a Site Development Chronology for a Mississippian Village in West-Central Illinois

Summary

Recent investigations at Lawrenz Gun Club (11Cs4), a palisaded Mississippian village and earthwork complex in the central Illinois River valley, highlight the importance of integrating landscape-scaled geophysical survey with site formation processes to develop chronologies derived from diverse archaeological and geoarchaeological investigations. A comprehensive geophysical survey of the fortified village complex and surrounding landscape revealed extensive habitation beyond the site palisade. The "habitation" magnetic anomalies outside the village walls had multiple spectral and spatial forms—excavations confirmed them as structures. Radiocarbon ages from structures inside and outside the community’s wall, combined with those from palisade excavations and GeoProbe cores of the landform and mounds, form the basis of a comprehensive chronology of site development.

The extended habitation zones at Lawrenz can be explained using multiple models of site development and coalescence. By targeting spectrally and spatially diverse magnetic anomalies for excavation, we assess the relative likelihood of certain site formation models over others, including what role warfare played in construction of and population aggregation within the site’s palisades. As the largest site in the valley, the development processes at Lawrenz have implications for the regional organization of labor in response to changing social dynamics and increasing warfare after AD 1200.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage