 |
 |
|
|
No. 13
The Kaesberg-Schaudt Site (11R594) and the Late Woodland Settlement in the Mary's River Valley
Brian M. Butler, Mark J. Wagner, Anne Cobry DiCosola, Eve A. Hargrave, Heather A. Lapham, Sarah J. Monteith, and Kathryn E. Parker
(2008) 298 pages; 51 tables; 50 figures; 0 plates
1-930487-19-3
Edition: Paperback
Price: $22.50
See larger photo of cover
|
| Description |
The Kaesberg-Schaudt site (11R594) is a large, intensively occupied Late Woodland village site located on a ridge crest overlooking the Mary’s River valley north of Steeleville, Illinois. In 1995 ITARP personnel excavated about 20 percent of the site as a result of a county road relocation project. The eastern side of the site was exposed, revealing an arc of densely packed cultural features that included 211 pit features, 3 structures, and 44 nonstructure postmolds. The excavated features are thought to be the eastern side of a ring midden pattern with the “plaza” located just west of the stripped area. Radiocarbon dates indicate a ca. 350-year occupation span from ca. A.D. 650 –1000 A.D. (calibrated), with some of the heaviest use coming after A.D. 800. Both artifacts and subsistence remains support a long-term multiseasonal use of the site. Botanical remains show that the inhabitants were heavily invested in plant cultivation, including maize, after A.D. 800.
Although deemed a Raymond phase site at the time of excavation, Kaesberg-Schaudt is ceramically very similar to the previously excavated Jamestown site in the Galum Creek drainage immediately to the east, and these sites in the Mary’s River valley and adjacent areas are sufficiently distinct in stylistic terms (chiefly ceramics) to warrant terminological distinction. Kaesberg-Schaudt is used as a type site to define the Mary’s River phase of the Late Woodland, an entity contemporaneous with the Patrick phase of the American Bottom and portions of the Kaskaskia Valley and with the Raymond phase of the Big Muddy drainage. The key ceramic marker is the persistence of rim nodes in some quantity, a trait virtually lacking in Raymond and Patrick phase assemblages. Various lines of evidence from Kaesberg-Schaudt show that the inhabitants had much more interaction with groups to the north and northwest (lower Kaskaskia Valley and the southern American Bottom) than with groups to the south and east. |
| Similar Titles |
|
|
|
|
 |
