The Deep-Site Excavation Strategy at the Koster Site

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Village, the Region, and Beyond: Stuart Struever (1931–2022) and the Lower Illinois River Valley Research Program" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

By 1972 the exposure of deeply buried occupation surfaces was a novelty in the Midwest. In Illinois, deep-site excavation experience was limited to the Modoc Rock Shelter exploration. Koster offered a new opportunity for a deep-site exposure, but one that raised significant engineering challenges. The requisite broad exposures had to be achieved in a stepwise fashion. For the Koster site, that goal was achieved by excavating a step six feet across for every six feet the work proceeded downward. This procedure was dictated by the discovery that the site's loess sediments were undermined by a slow seepage of water from its surroundings. The result was an unparalleled view of an Early Archaic occupanion although the excavation that had the appearance of an open-pit mine instead of series of isolated squares into deeply buried layers.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• The Village, the Region, and Beyond: Stuart Struever (1931–2022) and the Lower Illinois River Valley Research Program

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38102.0