Native Prairie: The Kankakee Protohistory Project and Ongoing Excavations at the Terminal Prehistoric Middle Grant Creek Site in Northern Illinois

Summary

Archaeologists have long explored the early interactions between Native Americans and Europeans in the Great Lakes region of Eastern North America. In particular, they have prioritized investigating these relationships at late prehistoric sites containing European trade goods. However, this narrow focus has led to neglecting late precontact sites that precede this period and which are essential for fully contextualizing these early interactions. In this presentation, we summarize the second year of ongoing excavations of the Middle Grant Creek (MGC) site at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in Wilmington, IL. This well-preserved, very late prehistoric Huber phase village expands our understandings of lifeways during the final period before European arrival. As one component of the broader Kankakee Protohistory Project, excavations at MGC refine existing understandings of Huber communities with particular focus on human-environment entanglements, mobility, and long distance trade. In this presentation, we summarize the geophysics, excavation, and ongoing analyses at MGC and contextualize the regional significance of the artifact assemblage, especially unexpected finds such as marine shell, painted pottery, and unique points. Conducted at one of the few single component sites in the region, this public archaeological project exposes the diversity of terminal prehistoric assemblages in ways that continue to unfold.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20332