Abstract Two multicomponent archaeological sites, Indian Camp Run 1 (ICR1) and Indian Camp Run 2 (ICR2), occur at the Indian Camp Run-Allegheny River confluence in the Ohio River headwaters of northwestern Pennsylvania. Here we present the geoarchaeology and occupational history of the confluence area based on soils, sediments, radiocarbon dating, diagnostic artifacts, and regional paleoenvironmental information. The confluence area comprises a fan-terrace complex (FTC) hosting ICR1 and a low-lying alluvial terrace (T1) hosting ICR2. The eastern/central portion of the FTC primarily reflects Late Wisconsin debris flow and colluvial/mass-wasting processes that are capped by a thin veneer of overbank alluvium that hosts the oldest archaeological materials. The western FTC and T1 were constructed by fluvial processes during the late-Middle and Late Holocene. Both landforms stabilized during the Late Holocene, allowing for repeated Late Archaic and younger occupations but also creating a blurred archaeological record.

Abstract Illinois contains a rich tradition of American Indian rock art dating to the precontact Mississippian and postcontact periods (AD 1000–1835). One long-standing question about this art involves the nature of the paints used to make it. Ethical concerns about the destructive removal of pigment samples, however, have limited compositional investigations. Here, we used portable X-ray fluorescence technology in situ to noninvasively examine the elemental composition of a selection of Illinois pictographs. This was done without any surface preparation or sampling. We analyzed pictographs from seven sites across southern Illinois to (1) determine the paint ingredients and (2) assess variability in the paint recipes. Elemental data revealed that paint recipes predominantly involved a single chromophore with few other additives. This suggests that motif designs and colors may have been more important to the Native creators of the rock art than were material components of paint recipes.

Abstract The role of sedentary settlements in precontact North America has been a topic of great interest and debate among archaeologists. Recent studies investigating sedentariness have employed various seasonal and paleoenvironmental data, including from mollusks. Here we focus on terrestrial gastropods recovered, and reported on in 1942, by Morrison from the Bluff Creek site (LuO59), in northwestern Alabama. As many land snails vary in their preferred habitats, changes in species composition by depth within a site can point to environmental impacts (from Native land-use practices) as possible indicators of sedentariness. Though analysis of Morrison's snail data does not clearly show this relationship, it does reemphasize the importance of sampling and recovery methods when dealing with gastropods and the need for further utilization of these types of data, especially in understanding paleoenvironments and formation processes.

Abstract In this article, we report the results of a high-resolution lidar drone survey focused on the Rattlesnake Mound Complex at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. Using lidar imagery supplemented by aerial photographs, we present new data concerning a series of low mounds that surround Rattlesnake Mound. To date, only two of these mounds have been documented in detail. We also provide an analysis of the effects of erosion caused by unfilled trenches left by Warren K. Moorehead during his 1927 excavation of Rattlesnake Mound. Lastly, we offer new findings concerning the bundle burials and “spirit house” structure uncovered within Rattlesnake Mound.

Abstract The Mississippian occupation of the central Illinois River valley (CIRV) represents nearly one-half millennium of negotiating cultural contact between in situ and outside groups. During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Bold Counselor Oneota populations immigrated to the CIRV, blending Upper Mississippian Oneota and Middle Mississippian lifeways. Thirty kilometers to the south, a string of Mississippian villages and complexes exists that is seemingly void of any Oneota influence. Though they are part of what is known as the “La Moine River Tradition,” these villages are poorly understood by archaeologists in terms of quantifiable data. This study analyzes domestic and mortuary context ceramics from three Late Mississippian villages in the lower half of the CIRV. The results suggest that the late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century La Moine River area towns represent CIRV Mississippians continuing to navigate a combination of American Bottom influences with ancestral traditions, while maintaining the status quo against an influx of Bold Counselor Oneota immigrants.

Abstract The peoples referred to by archaeologists as “Hopewell” were expert artisans and adept engineers who created vast culturally modified landscapes. One of the most intriguing Hopewell sites is the Turner Earthwork Complex in southwest Ohio. This complex included enclosures, embankments, and mounds. Excavations beneath one mound by Harvard University's Peabody Museum in the 1880s revealed a circle of 30 large features originally referred to as “Pits and Tunnels”—deep pits connected by long angled tunnels. Evidence of intense burning in each of these features led to interpretations of them as possible kilns. We re-created one such feature and lit fires in order to examine the thermodynamics of these systems. Our findings reveal ingenious inventions akin to augmented draft kilns, and their design allows for the relatively easy production of temperatures in excess of 1000°C. While possible functions will be tested in a future study, this initial research provides insights into Hopewell engineering and activities at the Turner site.

Abstract Ideas about how population movements contributed to the large-scale, long-term changes that played out among the precontact American Indian societies of the midcontinent are based largely on archaeological research focused in core occupation areas, such as the valleys of the Mississippi, Ohio, and Illinois Rivers. The less intensively occupied parts of the landscape at the margins of such core areas would have been involved in the push-and-pull dynamics associated with population expansion, contraction, and coalescence. It is challenging to study the demographics of these noncore areas because they generally have not been the focus of sustained archaeological research and lack a dense radiocarbon dataset with which to study demographic change. We use existing site data to estimate relative changes in population over the course of 12,500 years in the Wabash Valley in Illinois (WRVI), an edge area that straddles southern and midwestern ecological zones and articulates with the Illinois, Great Lakes, and Ohio watersheds. We identify changes in population during the Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene, Middle Holocene, and Late Holocene that can reasonably be attributed to migration into or out of the WRVI. We frame those population movements within the larger dynamics of the societies in the precontact midcontinent and suggest that our methods are useful for creating basic models of population change that can be used to develop specific hypotheses that can be tested with further analysis.

Abstract The Central Ohio Archaeological Digitization Survey (COADS) documented large samples of precontact artifacts, notably points, held by private collectors in south-central Ohio, in the United States. COADS captured two-dimensional images of several thousand points and several hundred three-dimensional images. Subjects were processed for landmark-based geometric morphometric (LGM) analysis as entire points and as stems only. Among other things, analysis can test for resharpening allometry—the possibility that preferential resharpening of blades caused change in shape with change in size of points—and related LGM concepts of modularity and integration. This study reports analysis for allometry in early Holocene COADS Thebes and St. Charles points. A clear allometric signal with fairly high modularity resides in the data; blade shape much more than stem shape varies with size, corroborated by independent reduction measures. Separate analysis of stems alone indicated no allometry, as expected since stems vary little with resharpening. Allometry must be considered before attributing variation in midcontinental whole-point shape to adaptation, drift, or other mechanisms.

Abstract Singapore, Michigan, was a small nineteenth-century lumber town situated on the north bank of the Kalamazoo River near its outlet to Lake Michigan. Nestled within a vegetated coastal dune field, Singapore enjoyed strong economic success in the mid-nineteenth century but was entirely abandoned by the turn of the twentieth century. Prevailing historical legend suggests that Singapore's dramatic downfall resulted from excessive clear-cutting of surrounding forest that destabilized bordering coastal dunes that then migrated inland, burying the village. This narrative was further supported by the fact that the precise location of Singapore remained uncertain within the dynamic dune system. In 2017–2018, a new construction project afforded an opportunity to search for Singapore and to determine if intact archaeological remains persisted. Members of the Applied Anthropology Laboratories at Ball State University designed a unique Phase I approach combining traditional survey methods, consideration of coastal dune dynamics and groundwater elevations, and extensive ground-penetrating radar survey to determine the potential presence and depth of associated archaeological deposits. Results yielded a small number of historic artifacts and several features believed to date to the nineteenth-century Singapore occupation. Despite popular myths about the village's location beneath coastal dunes, our work suggests village placement in a relatively flat, interdunal area between coastal dunes. Intact archaeological remains are present and restricted to the upper 0.6 m (2 ft) of eolian deposits. Regional economic factors, not environmental catastrophe, seem to best explain the disappearance and abandonment of Singapore.

Abstract In the fall of 2004, archaeologists, students, and volunteers from the Field Museum, DePaul University, and the community conducted archaeological survey and testing of an empty parcel adjacent to the new Chinese American Museum of Chicago. The lot, still at the original nineteenth-century street level, was over 3 ft below the modern Twenty-Third Street level. Shovel probes yielded in situ deposits, and subsequent test excavations unearthed layers of material culture and subsistence remains that reflect demographic change in this Chicago neighborhood from its beginning in the late nineteenth century through the 1911 restart of Chinatown and beyond. The hands-on archaeological project and resulting historical exhibition formed a stronger bond between Chinatown's past and present for young Chinese student participants, community members, historians, and anthropologists.