Evidence of prehistoric life found at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie

After a week of sifting through prairie soil with shovels in a riverside area at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, archologists found prehistoric remnants indicating that an active and vibrant community was once present there, according to a news release from Midewin.

The remnants – fragments of pottery shards and chipped stone tools – were identified on Oct. 22. The riverside area is now filled with honey locust and black walnut trees, the release said.

William Parkinson, curator and professor of anthropology with the Field Museum of Natural History and the University of Illinois Chicago, said in the release, “Based on the archaeological materials collected during the initial survey, the site seems to have been occupied shortly after 1,000 AD during the time when local hunting and gathering groups were experimenting with horticulture and settling down into more permanent villages.”

The team – students and staff from the University of Illinois Chicago and the Field Museum of Natural History – will resume investigations at Midewin in the spring and plan to continue assessing potential for a “long-term multidisciplinary, collaborative, research project,” the release said.

The archaeology investigation, conducted through an Organic Act Permit, consist of “shovel tests” – scraping the ground surface and digging small holes. Shovels testes don’t disturb the ground in any significant way, nor will the excavation units be opened, the release said.

The Field Museum of Natural History and the University of Illinois, Chicago, had acquired an Organic Act Permit from the USDA Forest Service in the summer of 2021 for “relocating a site that had been located by Northwestern University in the 1980s,” the release said.

UIC professor Mitch Hendrickson, a co-principal investigator on the project with Parkinson, said in the release that the proposed research will help them “build a micro-regional narrative about how Native groups interacted with this landscape as they converted from mobile hunters and gatherers to sedentary farmers.”

“This is the first step in building a longer narrative about human-landscape interaction in the region,” Hendrickson said in the release.

Field Director John Kelly, head of anthropology collections and an anthropology collections manager with the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, said the overall goal of the project is to “model the evolution of human-landscape interactions in the Chicagoland metropolitan area throughout the Holocene era” and understand the changes “in local land use through thousands of years.”

“It is important because people in the past seemed to have used this one relatively small parcel of land despite environmental changes that would have affected the resources available there, as well as cultural changes through time that would have modified people’s strategies for living on, and with, that land,” Kelly said in the release.

Some background

In 1985, when the Joliet Army Ammunition Plant was considering land use changes on the arsenal, archaeologists with Northwestern University were commissioned to conduct investigations and survey the land, the release said.

These site tests and surveys were conducted over several hundred acres of the Joliet Army Ammunition Plant from 1985 to 1987. Their findings “suggested pre-European Native American presence spanning a period of thousands of years,” the release said.

Archaeologists said in their report at the time that the site was a “highly significant cultural resource” with “deep deposits of lithic and ceramic material at high density in a well-preserved context.”

Research at the nearby Fisher site during in the first half of the 20th century established that communities in this region were an important part of the Late Woodland and Upper Mississippian world, which was from 800 to 1200 AD, the release said.

Moreover, recent work at the Middle Grant Creek site at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie showed the connection of the agricultural village to the broader world during the 17th century.

The USDA Forest Service hopes to utilize data from the project “to inform and refine strategies to further the objectives of the Illinois Land Conservation Act,” the release said. This act established Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in 1996.

Priorities include “restoration of natural tallgrass prairie and protection of important cultural and historical resources,” the release said.

For more information, visit fs.usda.gov/midewin.