Nine Gal Tavern

The Nine Gal Tavern site (11CH541) is located in western Champaign County, Illinois. Reconnaissance of the locality in 1987 and again in 1991 revealed a complex artifactual assemblage (n=4,875). Historical documentation and the archaeological recovery converge to suggest an evolving site function during the pre-Civil War period. By examining seven sociocultural variables, the pioneer tavern is modeled as passing through three discernable evolutionary stages: the Incidental Tavern, the Incipient Tavern, and the Full Tavern. The first and third of these stages are demonstrated at this site

The Rock Art of the Blood of the Ancestors Grotto (11SA557): The Archaeology of Religious Theater

11SA557 is a pictographic rock art site in the Hill Section of southern Illinois. To date, 33 icons, both simple and complex, have been identified. The distinctive biophysical qualities of the site have compelled an interpretation that it was in some fundamental sense “female.” Ethnohistorical and ethnographic explorations inform a treatment of 11SA557 as a religious theater where female puberty ceremonies of the Dhegiha Sioux were performed. Exploitation likely dates to the Protohistoric period. Twenty-one elements of religious theater are explored archaeologically and ethnographically. The application of the heuristic model of religious theater afforded a measureable enhancement of the understanding of the site

The Rock Art of the Blood of the Ancestors Grotto (11SA557): A Natural History of the Imaging Methodology

In the study of rock art in general, and pictographs in particular, how we collect and manipulate the images displayed on a canvas of nature determines both what is seen and what can be reposed for the future. The identification of an undocumented rock art site, primarily pictographic, in the Hill Section of southern Illinois afforded an opportunity to take a fresh look at the methodologies employed in data recovery and analysis. We herein detail a natural history of our investigations of 11SA557. Our methods involved the generation of five different types of image data, an eight-element protocol for the processes of image collection, and a ten-step protocol for the manipulation of the image data with Adobe Photoshop© (see Note1). Some of the special issues associated with the long term archiving of digital images are also addressed. Our approach was ultimately driven by concerns over the fragile and dynamic properties of pictographs and the application of technologies and techniques that would result in minimal invasiveness, heighten interobserver reliability, replicable results, and the intergenerational availability of one’s findings

The 1730 Fox Fort: Historical Debate and Archaeological Endeavor

For more than one hundred years historians and archaeologists have debated the location of the 1730 fortification created by the Meskwaki on the prairies of eastern Illinois. After four summers of archaeological exploration of the Arrowsmith Battle Ground (11ML6), architectural patterns consistent with the historical record of the siege and diagnostic elements of the Meskwaki material assemblage have been identified. The present paper summarizes these findings and concludes this to be the site of the 1730 Fox fort

Surface Collection of the Grand Village of the Illini State Historic Site

The parcel of land today known as the Grand Village of the Illini State Historic Site (GVOI) was purchased by the state of Illinois in 1991. It is currently under the administration of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency (Figure 4. 1). As the likely location of the Grand Village of the Kaskaskia described by Marquette, La Salle, and others, the site provides an unusual opportunity to examine archaeological questions focusing on the Contact period of North American history

Deciphering the Grand Village of the Illinois: A Preliminary Assessment of the Grand Village Research Project

On April 24, 1987, Thomas Emerson at the State Historic Preservation Office received a telephone call from a Chicago lawyer who wanted an answer to a simple question: Are there any laws that protect old Indian villages and graves that are on the National Register? Unfortunately, the answer was a simple “no.” At the time, Emerson did not suspect that this question would initiate a more than four-year struggle to save one of the most important historic sites in the country. The site, known variously as the Zimmerman site, the Grand Village of the Kaskaskia, Old Kaskaskia Village, the Grand Village of the Illinois, or simply llLS13, was purchased by developers who planned to build vacation homes on it. Eventually, after a private and public campaign that reached an international level, Governor James Thompson authorized the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency (IHPA) to seek condemnation of the property to bring it into public ownership. In April 1991, a final settlement was reached and the site was purchased by the state. It is currently under the administration of the IHPA and has been renamed the Grand Village of the Illinois State Historic Site. The Grand Village is the most important surviving village and burial site of the seventeenth-century Illinois Confederacy. In addition, it is the location of the initial French-Illinois contact and of the first Catholic mission in the Illinois Country. The site also contains materials that represent an unbroken sequence of late prehistoric, protohistoric, and Historic Indian cultural development from the ninth to the last quarter of the eighteenth century