Storage, seasonality, and women’s labor in northern Illinois: Using archaeological pollen analysis to investigate protohistory

Abstract

This article introduces new data to explorations of protohistoric lifeways and expands understandings of storage, seasonal practices, and women’s labor. Pollen analysis was conducted on sediment samples from the 1979 excavation of the late precontact Oak Forest site (11CK53) in Cook County, IL, near Chicago. The data demonstrate the springtime collection of firewood and the use of grass to line storage features. These data also capture protohistoric women’s labor, since, according to historical records, women prepared storage pits and collected firewood. Tacking between protohistory and history, findings demonstrate probable continuity in seasonal practices that requires a rethinking and refining of how we categorize change during the transition to the colonial era. Overall, this work reintroduces the effectiveness of pollen analysis to address long-standing questions in Midwestern archaeology.