Reconstructing Vanished Midwestern Wetlands: Insights from the Aquatic Fauna of the Middle Grant Creek Site

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Wetlands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The same glacial processes that produced Lake Michigan in midwestern North America also produced numerous wetlands of many types at the southern end of the lake. A diverse wetland matrix of smaller lakes, rivers, streams, ponds, marshes, swamps, bogs, and fens was once found throughout the region. Many of these wetlands have been destroyed or altered by urban and agricultural development. Wetlands were essential to Native Americans who inhabited the area prior to European colonization. The Middle Grant Creek site, an early sixteenth-century Huber phase agricultural village, has produced abundant, diverse, and well-preserved remains of fauna from aquatic ecosystems. The faunal remains can be used to determine the types of wetlands that were present in the vicinity even if they no longer exist. They can also be compared to those from other sites in the region to understand Late Prehistoric patterns of wetland exploitation. We examine the habitat preferences of the species that were used by the inhabitants of Middle Grant Creek to determine what types of wetlands were once present nearby and compare the past distribution of wetlands to the current wetland-impoverished landscape. Such studies are important for those who wish to understand or reestablish vanished ecosystems.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Archaeology of Wetlands   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38450.0