When the first Europeans explored deep into the interior of the present-day American South, they traveled among and interacted with several groups of Native Americans who shared a culture that archaeologists refer to as "Mississippian." It was roughly 500 years earlier in the American Bottom region of southwestern Illinois, a rich stretch of floodplain of the Mississippi River near the city of Saint Louis, where Mississippian culture first developed. The American Bottom is home to the famous archaeological site of Cahokia, a U.S. National Historic Landmark and UNESCO World Heritage Site. Between the 11th- and 12th-centuries AD Cahokia grew into the largest and most complex pre-Columbian town in what is now the United States. Supported in large part by an increasing economic focus on maize agriculture, the actions of Cahokians and their neighbors ushered in new forms of social, political, and economic complexity that would help shape the histories of Native groups in the U.S. Midwest and South for centuries to come.
Under the direction Dr. Robin Beck, PhD candidate Casey Barrier will continue research that provides new information about early Mississippian developments in the American Bottom. Barrier's work at the archaeological site of Washausen in Monroe County, Illinois, has demonstrated that the inhabitants of this site constructed one of the earliest Mississippian towns in the region. Located approximately 24 miles south of Cahokia, the town of Washausen was constructed during the 10th- and 11th-centuries AD. Unlike Cahokia, Washausen was occupied for only a handful of generations. Because of this, the archaeological remains preserved at the site provide a unique historical "snapshot" in time that portrays local ways of life during the critical period of initial Mississippian cultural developments. Barrier's research at Washausen has integrated high-tech, geophysical survey methodologies and archaeological excavations that has produced data showing the locations of distinct residential neighborhoods, public courtyards, and a central public plaza and monumental earthen mounds. During these excavations, both undergraduate and graduate students were able to be trained in current archaeological field methodologies.
This research will allow Barrier to continue collaborations with scientific specialists to provide new information about the earliest Mississippian societies. Excavations at Washausen produced well-preserved archaeological remains that will be analyzed to address research questions about new forms of social and political-economic relations, the composition of residential neighborhoods, the reliance on maize agriculture and locally available animal and plant foods, the historical importance of large-scale public festivals, and Washausen's interactions with their Cahokian neighbors. Specifically, paleobotanical, zooarchaeological, and soil mircomorphological analyses will produce rich, comparative datasets for this site and region. Coupled with better chronological controls afforded by radiocarbon dating of recovered organic remains from secure archaeological deposits, these analyses will provide significant new insights about the historical transformations that took place at one of the earliest Mississippian towns in the Americas.
The results of this dissertation research will be presented in subsequent publications, and will be of significance to other Mississippian researchers, as well as scholars working on similar research questions about complex societies in other world regions. These results will also be presented publicly to audiences at academic conferences, but also at lectures for the public. Barrier will continue training undergraduate students in the laboratory, and provide them opportunities to collaborate with other scientific specialists.
This archaeological project examined one of the earliest settled towns in the eastern United States that was constructed several centuries prior to the arrival of Europeans to the American continent in the A.D. 1500s. Focused on the archaeological site named "Washausen" located in west-central Illinois (near the present-day city of Saint Louis, Missouri), this research has revealed how Native Americans formed this new community during the late tenth through eleventh centuries A.D. Prior to Washausen’s occupation, small family groups living in this region resided in small villages scattered along the banks of the Mississippi River and its tributaries. With the founding of the larger town at Washausen (and likely others like it), native groups in the American mid-continent were setting into motion historical developments toward even larger social and political groupings, more densely occupied settlements, and even the largest pre-contact period urban-like settlement in all of North America: Cahokia. NSF-funded analyses of newly excavated artifacts (e.g., pottery and stone tools), discarded food remains (e.g., processed animal bones, charred seeds from edible plants, etc.), geological-soil samples, as well as radiocarbon 14C dating, have yielded evidence used to demonstrate aspects of how Washausen’s inhabitants formed their new community. Through participation in public and ceremonial activities, residents and visitors at this town-space created social, political, and religious institutions that served to link the numerous family groups that were migrating to this new regional town. Results from this research have provided crucial data that are allowing archaeologists to more fully understand local historical developments in the American mid-continent. In addition, this NSF-funded project also contributes to our broader anthropological understanding of how humans have created larger social and political alliances world-wide, both in the past as well as more recently. This research contributes to scholarship that seeks to understand how humans take part in, as well as adapt to, changing living conditions in towns and even larger, urban social environments. Datasets resulting from this project are being published in academic journals, and presented at professional conferences as well as to public K-12 school classes, to ensure access by professionals as well as the wider public. Beyond the direct scholarly contributions to research, this project has provided opportunities to train college and high school students. Throughout analyses of cultural materials (i.e., artifacts) produced by this project, the principal investigators have partnered with student volunteers in order to provide them the practical experiences necessary to the practice of archaeological science. For example, students have learned methodological techniques of artifact analyses, including the study of pottery remains and stone tool debris that provide historical details about past societies and details of social and historical change through time. In this way, students are able to learn how to conduct scientific research by actually participating in data collection and analysis. These cultural materials are also being used as teaching collections for archaeology and anthropology classes. The use of teaching collections is a vital part of teaching within the material sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Cultural-material remains produced during this NSF-funded project have provided students the ability to learn through hands-on activities in the classroom. After final analyses and reporting are complete all materials and datasets produced by this project will be submitted to a state-certified research and collections museum for curation. This will ensure that all materials will be available to other scholars for future research using these collections.
