Monumentality and Time at the Golden Eagle Site (11C120)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Golden Eagle site (11C120), Calhoun County, IL, is located on the edge of the Deer Plain Terrace, 8 km upstream of the confluence of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. First documented by William McAdams in the late nineteenth century, Golden Eagle is the only Illinois River Valley mound site to include a ditch-and-embankment enclosure. The site is traditionally thought to date to the valley’s Middle Woodland (Hopewell) period based on its architectural features, particularly the enclosure and mounds; however, artifacts recovered from the site can be dated from the Archaic to Mississippian periods. Since 2013, archaeologists at the Center for American Archeology have conducted fieldwork at the Golden Eagle site in order to better understand construction sequences and to place the site within its proper temporal context. In 2018, students in CAA field schools excavated 16 1x2 m units to test for the presence of embankment fill north of Mound 1. Evidence from these units indicate that this portion of the enclosure was constructed during the Late Woodland period. In this paper, we present these results and those from previous seasons and discuss their implications for construction and use of Golden Eagle.

Cite this Record

Monumentality and Time at the Golden Eagle Site (11C120). Emma Jones, Zoe Doubles, Esmeralda Ferrales, Kenzie May, Jason King. Presented at The 84th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Albuquerque, NM. 2019 ( tDAR id: 450292)

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Keywords

Geographic Keywords
North America: Midwest

Spatial Coverage

min long: -103.975; min lat: 36.598 ; max long: -80.42; max lat: 48.922 ;

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26102