Millstone Bluff

Last updated

Millstone Bluff
Millstone Bluff 1.jpg
Soil depressions indicate the location of houses
Location Illinois Route 147 west of its junction with Illinois Route 145 [1]
Nearest city Glendale, Illinois
Coordinates 37°28′1″N88°41′17″W / 37.46694°N 88.68806°W / 37.46694; -88.68806
Area418 acres (169 ha)
Builtc. 1492-1540 [2]
NRHP reference No. 73000716 [3]
Added to NRHPOctober 15, 1973

Millstone Bluff is a natural bluff in Pope County, Illinois, United States, located near the community of Glendale. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places because of its archaeological significance, Millstone Bluff is one of three National Register sites in Pope County, along with the Golconda Historic District and part of the Kincaid Mounds State Historic Site. [3]

Contents

The bluff is home to a prehistoric Native American settlement used by Mississippian cultures. The settlement site is little more than depressions sitting atop the bluff, which lies within the Shawnee National Forest. The United States Forest Service controls an interpretive trail to the site. [4] Aside from the remains of the Mississippian settlement, the bluff contains a prehistoric stone box cemetery, a rock art site, and a Late Woodland stone fort. [2]

Petroglyphs at this site include two thunderbirds, pipes, axes, a spider-like creature, turkey tracks, a humanoid form, and the cross and circle motif common to other petroglyph sites in southern Illinois.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shiloh Indian Mounds Site</span> United States historic place

Shiloh Indian Mounds Site (40HR7) is an archaeological site of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture. It is located beside the Tennessee River on the grounds of the Shiloh National Military Park, in Hardin County of southwestern Tennessee. A National Historic Landmark, it is one of the largest Woodland era sites in the southeastern United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Register of Historic Places listings in Illinois</span>

This is a list of properties and districts in Illinois that are on the National Register of Historic Places. There are over 1,900 in total. Of these, 85 are National Historic Landmarks. There are listings in all of the state's 102 counties.
     This National Park Service list is complete through NPS recent listings posted March 8, 2024.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grand Village of the Illinois</span> Archaeological site in Illinois, United States

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 Hoojah Branch Site (9RA34) is an archaeological site in Rabun County, Georgia that had periods of occupation from the Archaic period to the Mississippian period. It is believed to be a platform mound similar to others across North Georgia built by peoples of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture that flourished in the Southeastern United States from approximately the years 1000 to 1600. The site is located about one mile east of Dillard, Georgia and is in the Chattahoochee National Forest and may have had a connection to the Qualla mound complexes in southwestern North Carolina. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 24, 1973 as reference number 86003667

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Golconda Historic District</span> Historic district in Illinois, United States

The Golconda Historic District is a designated historic district in the Pope County, Illinois city of Golconda, along the banks of the Ohio River. The district is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, one of only three sites in Pope County to be on the Register. The other sites are Millstone Bluff, a prehistoric Mississippian settlement in the Shawnee National Forest, and the Pope County portion of the Kincaid Mounds, a prehistoric city in the Ohio River floodplain. The historic district located along Illinois Route 146 and was added to the Register in 1976.

The Orendorf Site is a prehistoric archaeological site located near the city of Canton, Fulton County, Illinois. The site includes four distinct areas of Middle Mississippian settlement; the settlement area was one of seven major sites in the Spoon River tradition. The four settlement sites within the larger site came as the result of a single village relocating multiple times; this movement became useful to archaeologists, as artifacts from different periods are spread out rather than mixed together at a single site. The settlement functioned as a regional center within the Spoon River culture, making it a hub in its hierarchal political organization and part of many important trade routes. Trade and migration linked the settlement to the large Mississippian city of Cahokia; while the settlement's culture had much in common with Cahokian culture, it was also a distinct regional culture in its own right.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kincaid Mounds State Historic Site</span> Archaeological site in Illinois, US

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Modoc Rock Shelter</span> Archaeological site in Illinois, United States

The Modoc Rock Shelter is a rock shelter or overhang located beneath the sandstone bluffs that form the eastern border of the Mississippi River floodplain at which Native American peoples lived for thousands of years. This site is significant for its archaeological evidence of thousands of years of human habitation during the Archaic period in the Eastern United States. It is located on the northeastern side of County Road 7 southeast of Prairie du Rocher in Randolph County, Illinois, United States. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Winterville site</span> Archaeological site in Washington County, Mississippi, United States

The Winterville site is a major archaeological site in unincorporated Washington County, Mississippi, north of Greenville and along the river. It consists of major earthwork monuments, including more than twelve large platform mounds and cleared and filled plazas. It is the type site for the Winterville Phase of the Lower Yazoo Basin region of the Plaquemine Mississippian culture. Protected as a state park, it has been designated as a National Historic Landmark.

American Indian Rock Art in Minnesota MPS is a Multiple Property Submission (MPS) of the eligibility of many rock art properties for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The listing is to protect and preserve Native American petroglyphs, pictographs and petroform rock art sites in the present day U.S. state of Minnesota.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chucalissa</span> United States historic place

The C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa is located on and exhibits excavated materials of the Mississippian culture archaeological site known as Chucalissa which means "abandoned house" in Chickasaw. The site is located adjacent to the T. O. Fuller State Park within the city of Memphis, Tennessee, United States. Chucalissa was designated National Historic Landmark in 1994 due to its importance as one of the best-preserved and major prehistoric settlement sites in the region.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sommerheim Park Archaeological District</span> Historic district in Pennsylvania, United States

The Sommerheim Park Archaeological District includes a group of six archaeological sites west of Erie, Pennsylvania in the United States. The sites are in Sommerheim Park, one of the few undeveloped areas of the Lake Erie shoreline, in Millcreek Township. This district has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This is one of the leading archaeological sites in the Erie area and along the southern shoreline of Lake Erie, due to the amount of artifacts and the lack of disturbance on the site.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sugar Grove Petroglyphs</span> United States historic place

The Sugar Grove Petroglyphs are a group of petroglyphs in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Located on an outcrop of sandstone in Monongahela Township near the eastern edge of Greene County, the petroglyphs have been known since at least the 1930s. Due to their value as an archaeological site, the petroglyphs have been named a historic site.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Petroglyph Canyon</span> United States historic place

Petroglyph Canyon (24CB601) is an archaeologically significant canyon in the northwestern United States. Located on both sides of the border between Montana and Wyoming, the canyon has long been obscure due to its small size. However, it gained substantial attention in the late 20th century because of its numerous prehistoric petroglyphs, and much of it was named a historic site in the 1970s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cleiman Mound and Village Site</span> Archaeological site in Illinois, United States

The Cleiman Mound and Village Site is a prehistoric archaeological site located near the Mississippi River in Jackson County, Illinois. The site includes an intact burial mound and the remains of a village site. The village was inhabited by a number of prehistoric cultures during the Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian periods; settlement at the site began prior to 400 B.C. and lasted through 1300 A.D. The mound was built during the Middle Woodland Period by Hopewellian peoples and is likely the only Hopewell mound in the Mississippi Valley in Southern Illinois.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lunsford-Pulcher Archeological Site</span> Archaeological site in Illinois, United States

The Lunsford-Pulcher Archeological Site is a prehistoric archaeological site in rural Monroe and St. Clair counties in Illinois. The site was the location of a Middle Mississippian village which was probably a satellite community of Cahokia. Several pyramidal burial mounds are included in the site. Archaeological excavations at the site have also discovered the remains of houses and garden beds, making the site one of the few Mississippian villages at which garden beds have been found. The site has been known to European settlers since early settlement of the area in the late 18th century; despite being used for farmland, the site remains in good condition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Larson Site</span> Archaeological site in Illinois, United States

The Larson Site is a prehistoric archaeological site in Fulton County, Illinois, near the city of Lewistown. The site was the location of a Mississippian town and was occupied during the 13th and 14th centuries. The town was one of seven major town sites in the central Illinois River valley and served as a social and economic center for surrounding villages and farms. The artifacts uncovered at the site have been well-preserved and include both organic remains and intact homes, providing significant archaeological evidence regarding the Mississippian way of life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moccasin Bluff site</span> Archaeological site in Michigan, United States

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.

References

  1. Zdzieblowski, Arthur. National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: Millstone Bluff. National Park Service, n.d., 4.
  2. 1 2 Archaeology at Millstone Bluff, Shawnee National Forest, U.S. Forest Service. Retrieved January 22, 2007.
  3. 1 2 "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  4. Millstone Bluff, Shawnee National Forest, U.S. Forest Service. Retrieved January 22, 2007.