The Center for American Archeology, or CAA, is an independent non-profit 501(c)(3) research and education institution located in Kampsville, Illinois, USA, near the Illinois River. It is dedicated to the exploration of the culture of prehistoric Native Americans and, to a lesser extent, the European settlers who supplanted them.
Founded on what is often referred to as the "Nile of North America," the region surrounding the confluence of the Mississippi and the Illinois rivers, the Center for American Archeology specializes in North American pre-Columbian cultures of the area. Due to successive settlement along the rivers, the area is particularly rich in Woodland Period artifacts, especially those of the Middle Woodland Hopewell culture, and later Mississippian culture. The Center has been associated with years of excavation at the Koster Site in Greene County, Illinois. Researchers have uncovered evidence of more than 7,000 years of human habitation, back to the Early Archaic period (8000 BC to 1000 BC).
The center is located about 90 minutes north of St. Louis and the Cahokia Mounds near Collinsville, Illinois. It uses the Kamp Store as the site of the CAA's Visitor’s Center and Museum. The early 1900s mercantile building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Hopewell tradition, also called the Hopewell culture and Hopewellian exchange, describes a network of precontact Native American cultures that flourished in settlements along rivers in the northeastern and midwestern Eastern Woodlands from 100 BCE to 500 CE, in the Middle Woodland period. The Hopewell tradition was not a single culture or society but a widely dispersed set of populations connected by a common network of trade routes.
Russell Cave National Monument is a U.S. National Monument in northeastern Alabama, United States, close to the town of Bridgeport. The monument was established on May 11, 1961, when 310 acres (1.3 km2) of land were donated by the National Geographic Society to the American people. It is now administered and maintained by the National Park Service. The National Monument was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966.
In the classification of archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 BCE to European contact in the eastern part of North America, with some archaeologists distinguishing the Mississippian period, from 1000 CE to European contact as a separate period. The term "Woodland Period" was introduced in the 1930s as a generic term for prehistoric sites falling between the Archaic hunter-gatherers and the agriculturalist Mississippian cultures. The Eastern Woodlands cultural region covers what is now eastern Canada south of the Subarctic region, the Eastern United States, along to the Gulf of Mexico.
Icehouse Bottom is a prehistoric Native American site in Monroe County, Tennessee, located on the Little Tennessee River in the southeastern United States. Native Americans were using the site as a semi-permanent hunting camp as early as 7500 BC, making it one of the oldest-known habitation areas in what is now the state of Tennessee. Analysis of the site's Woodland period artifacts shows evidence of an extensive trade network that reached to indigenous peoples in Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio. This was later an area of known Cherokee settlements, the historic people encountered by Anglo-European settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Poverty Point culture is the archaeological culture of a prehistoric indigenous peoples who inhabited a portion of North America's lower Mississippi Valley and surrounding Gulf coast from about 1730 – 1350 BC.
The Grand Village of the Illinois, also called Old Kaskaskia Village, is a site significant for being the best documented historic Native American village in the Illinois River valley. It was a large agricultural and trading village of Native Americans of the Illinois confederacy, located on the north bank of the Illinois River near the present town of Utica, Illinois. French explorers Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette came across it in 1673. The Kaskaskia, a tribe of the Illiniwek people lived in the village. It grew rapidly after a French mission and fur trading post were established there in 1675, to a population of about 6,000 people in about 460 houses. Around 1691 the Kaskaskia and other Illiniwek moved further south, abandoning the site due to pressure from an Iroquois invasion from the northeast.
The Koster Site is a prehistoric archaeological site located south of Eldred, Illinois. The site covers more than 3 acres and extends 30 feet down into the alluvial deposits of the Illinois River valley. Over the course of its excavation between 1969 and 1978, Koster produced deeply buried evidence of ancient human occupation from the early Archaic period to the Mississippian period. The soil strata contains a total of 25 distinct occupations each separated by additional layers of soil, making the site exceptionally well-preserved.
The Red Ocher people were an indigenous people of North America. A series of archaeological sites located in the Upper Great Lakes, the Greater Illinois River Valley, and the Ohio River Valley in the American Midwest have been discovered to be a Red Ocher burial complex, dating from 1000 BC to 400 BC, the Terminal Archaic – Early Woodland period. Characterized as shallow burials located in sandy ridges along river valleys, covered in red ochre or hydrated iron oxide (FeH3O), they contain diagnostic artifacts that include caches of flint points, turkey-tails, and various forms of worked copper. Turkey-tails are large flint blades of a distinct type. It is believed that Red Ocher people spoke an ancestral form of the Algonquian languages.
Stuart McKee Struever is an American archaeologist and anthropologist best known for his contributions to the archaeology of the Woodland Period in the US midwest and for his leadership of archaeology research & education foundations. He was a professor of anthropology at Northwestern University.
The Kincaid Mounds Historic Site c. 1050–1400 CE, is a Mississippian culture archaeological site located at the southern tip of present-day U.S. state of Illinois, along the Ohio River. Kincaid Mounds has been notable for both its significant role in native North American prehistory and for the central role the site has played in the development of modern archaeological techniques. The site had at least 11 substructure platform mounds, and 8 other monuments.
The archaeology of Iowa is the study of the buried remains of human culture within the U.S. state of Iowa from the earliest prehistoric through the late historic periods. When the American Indians first arrived in what is now Iowa more than 13,000 years ago, they were hunters and gatherers living in a Pleistocene glacial landscape. By the time European explorers visited Iowa, American Indians were largely settled farmers with complex economic, social, and political systems. This transformation happened gradually. During the Archaic period American Indians adapted to local environments and ecosystems, slowly becoming more sedentary as populations increased. More than 3,000 years ago, during the Late Archaic period, American Indians in Iowa began utilizing domesticated plants. The subsequent Woodland period saw an increase on the reliance on agriculture and social complexity, with increased use of mounds, ceramics, and specialized subsistence. During the Late Prehistoric period increased use of maize and social changes led to social flourishing and nucleated settlements. The arrival of European trade goods and diseases in the Protohistoric period led to dramatic population shifts and economic and social upheaval, with the arrival of new tribes and early European explorers and traders. During the Historical period European traders and American Indians in Iowa gave way to American settlers and Iowa was transformed into an agricultural state.
Prehistory of Colorado provides an overview of the activities that occurred prior to Colorado's recorded history. Colorado experienced cataclysmic geological events over billions of years, which shaped the land and resulted in diverse ecosystems. The ecosystems included several ice ages, tropical oceans, and a massive volcanic eruption. Then, ancient layers of earth rose to become the Rocky Mountains.
Mummy Cave is a rock shelter and archeological site in Park County, Wyoming, United States, near the eastern entrance to Yellowstone National Park. The site is adjacent to the concurrent U.S. Routes 14/16/20, on the left bank of the North Fork of the Shoshone River at an altitude of 6,310 feet (1,920 m) in Shoshone National Forest.
The Memorial Park Site is an archaeological site located near the confluence of Bald Eagle Creek and the West Branch Susquehanna River in Lock Haven in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Research projects conducted at the site since 1979 have found prehistoric cultural deposits that collectively span 8,000 years.
The Plum Island Eagle Sanctuary is a 52-acre island in the Illinois River owned by the Illinois Audubon Society. It was purchased March 24, 2004 to act as a wildlife sanctuary, to protect foraging habitat for wintering bald eagles. It is close to Matthiessen State Park and adjacent to Starved Rock State Park.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the prehistoric people of Colorado, which covers the period of when Native Americans lived in Colorado prior to contact with the Domínguez–Escalante expedition in 1776. People's lifestyles included nomadic hunter-gathering, semi-permanent village dwelling, and residing in pueblos.
The Carrier Mills Archaeological District is a group of prehistoric archaeological sites located along the Saline River south of Carrier Mills, Illinois. The sites were inhabited over the period from 2500 B.C. to 700 A.D. The oldest three sites date from the Late Archaic period, which encompassed the first 1500 years of occupation at the district; these sites include two small campsites and a larger base camp. Several sites were inhabited during the Early Woodland period, which lasted until 500 B.C.; these sites are distinguished by fragments of pottery, which was developed during this period. The Early Woodland period sites are likely to have been a part of the Crab Orchard culture, a local subtype of the Hopewell tradition. A number of sites date from the Middle Woodland Period, which spanned from 300 B.C. to 500 A.D.; these sites appear to have adopted the technology, but not the traditions, of the Hopewell culture. A single projectile point from the Late Woodland period has also been recovered from the site.
The Spikebuck Town Mound and Village Site is a prehistoric and historic archaeological site on Town Creek near its confluence with the Hiwassee River within the boundaries of present-day Hayesville, North Carolina. The site encompasses the former area of the Cherokee village of Quanassee and associated farmsteads. The village was centered on what is known as Spikebuck Mound, an earthwork platform mound, likely built about 1,000 CE by ancestral indigenous peoples during the South Appalachian Mississippian culture period.
The Moccasin Bluff site is an archaeological site located along the Red Bud Trail and the St. Joseph River north of Buchanan, Michigan. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, and has been classified as a multi-component prehistoric site with the major component dating to the Late Woodland/Upper Mississippian period.
The Griesmer site (La-3) is located on the Kankakee River in Lake County, Indiana, about a mile southeast of Schneider, in Northwestern Indiana. It is classified as a Prehistoric, multi-component site with Middle Woodland, Late Woodland and Upper Mississippian occupations. The deposits were not stratified, but observation of the types of artifacts present, together with radiocarbon dates, helped to define the sequence of occupations at the site.