The Mitchell Site: An Upgrade

Summary

In the Spring of 2015, SCI Engineering, Inc. was contracted to conduct archaeological investigations ahead of the expansion of the Cedar Creek Lumberyard situated in the northeast portion of the Mitchell site (11MS30) in Madison County, Illinois. These investigations resulted in the delineation of multiple wall trench structures of varying size and shape. Most of what is known of this important Mississippian mound center comes from James W. Porter’s dissertation on his 1960s salvage excavations at Mitchell ahead of the construction of an interstate highway that ultimately destroyed all but two of the ten mounds at the site. This work, and a small scale investigation in the mid-1970s and minor testing in the 1990s, constitute the extent of modern archaeological investigations previously conducted at the Mitchell site. In an attempt to put the 2015 structures into a broader Mitchell context, an effort was made to bring all of these investigations into a GIS format resulting in an overall site map depicting all of the previous excavations and all of the cultural features that have been identified to date. This GIS mapping project provides opportunities to draw new insights into this major Mississippian center in the northern American Bottom.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Insights into Mississippian Culture at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15029