This paper is primarily planned for the layman, the beginning student of
prehistory and others interested in acquiring a general understanding of
how primitive man lived during his successive occupations of Illinois
and neighboring areas in the more important archaeological periods. Most
of the archaeological data for the chief cultures or ways of life are
given in references in the accompanying bibliography of technical
publications selected as those from which (in the opinion of the writer)
the information can be most easily gleaned.
The reconstructions given of the cultural features, where not those
ordinarily inferred from archaeological findings, are based on a study
of the practices commonly found among primitive people now, or until
recently, living in the same stage or substage. These are tentative
conclusions resulting from a study of fifty tribes in the
Self-Domestication (pre-farming) stage and forty in the Plant-Raising
substage. Because primitive tribes which are under pressure from people
with advanced food-draft-animal agriculture or with machine industry or
which are in a transitional condition between two adjacent stages are
disorganized or drastically changing a formerly stabilized mode of life,
great care has been exercised in drawing general conclusions from their
cultural features.
The reconstructions of the perishable objects shown in the drawings are
generally in keeping with the culture in which they are exhibited but
cannot be vouched for as to their detailed form. The handle of an adze,
the shape of a cabin roof, the headdress of a tribal chief each served
the purpose for which they were made and their exact form was and is of
no more consequence in the culture than the fashions in women’s hats or
the fins on an automobile are in our own. The details in cultures serve
to set them apart from each other; it is the basic and significant
features and subfeatures that determine relationships and permit the
most useful classification.
The study mentioned above is still incomplete, but results so far
obtained indicate:
1. That man in the same stage (and substage) of cultural development
_tends_ to invent and employ the same broad social and spiritual
features, regardless of surroundings.
2. That where significant differences arise between substages of the
same stage, they are (at least sometimes) linked with peculiarities
of climate and/or natural resources which the people have seized
upon and exploited to the improvement of their economic situation.
3. That many details within these broad types of economic, social and
spiritual features appear to vary unpredictably within the range of
available possibilities.
The stage and criterion for each were proposed in an earlier issue (No.
6) of this series, _Man’s Venture In Culture_, (Deuel 1950, pp. 5-12)
as:
1. _Natural Man_ (_Protocultural_), when “man” presumably employed
sticks and stones as implements and weapons.
2. _Self-Domestication_, following the discovery of the principle of the
conchoidal fracturing of flint and its control, and the invention of
tool and weapon types.
3. _Farming_ or _Food-Raising_, due to the discovery that grains
(grasses) and food-draft animals could be bred and raised in
captivity.
4. _Inanimate Power Machine_ (_Machine Age_), after the discovery of the
availability of water and wind as sources for energy and the
adaptation of animal-driven machines to utilize them.
Man in the wild or Protocultural stage is thought not to have reached
the Americas. The oxlike mammals were not domesticated in America for
drawing ploughs and vehicles, turning grain mills or to serve as a
continuous food supply source. Consequently, we are concerned in the
following discussion only with peoples in the Self-Domestication stage
and the Plant-Raising substage of Farming.
In ordinary language, the word “culture” is used in a diversity of
senses. In these pages it is used in one of two ways, the one employed
being readily understood from the context. In a general sense, culture
means the significant beliefs, customary activities and social
prohibitions that are peculiar to man (together with the man-made tools,
weapons and other material objects that he finds or has found necessary)
that modify, limit or enhance in some manner, most of his discernible
natural activities due to and arising from his physical animal
inheritance and organization. Culture in a specific sense refers to the
significant cultural features of a group or period under consideration.
For convenience, any cultural activity according to its dominant purpose
may be spoken of as belonging to one of three aspects of culture, (a)
economic (technological and intellectual); (b) social (and political);
and (c) spiritual (religious, artistic and recreational). To lesser
degrees, most cultural activities have relationships with the two
aspects other than the dominant.
Certain prevalent archaeological designations have been changed to
remove time implications (e.g. “early” and “late” Woodland to _Initial_
[beginning] and _Final_ [end of an archaeological series]), or to
shorten (e.g. “Tennessee-Cumberland” or “Gordon-Fewkes” to
_Cumberland_).
Technical terms have generally been avoided; but where it has seemed
necessary to retain them or to use words in a special sense, they are
explained in the text or can be found in the glossary. The terms
_pattern_ and _phase_ are those generally employed in the McKern system
of classification, for the larger groupings into which it is customary
to place the “cultures” as determined from the typology of the
artifacts, their association in the assemblage and pertinent data
recovered at a site (or local community) with due regard to
circumstances of time and location of other sites nearby and over a
larger area. The largest unit is the _pattern_ which is made up of a
number of _phases_. Cultural divisions smaller than these units are
spoken of here as _subcultures_.
The approximate relationships of the archaeological units to the broader
cultural stages and substages are given in Table I, page 4. The
succession and coexistence of the archaeological units is indicated in
the diagram “The Stream of Culture”, p. 57. The summary of
“Characteristics of the Archaeological-Cultural Units” occurs on pages
70-76.
This is a story mainly of Illinois when occupied by American Indians but
it would not give a reasonably true picture without showing the known
extensions of some of the cultures into surrounding areas and the
probable intrusions from outside the state.
Of necessity in attempting a summary of the archaeology of Illinois and
adjacent areas, the writer has had to lean heavily on the field work and
reports of the many anthropologists who have contributed so much to the
present understanding of the American Indian in the United States. To
this invaluable source material and to these able scientists the
indebtedness of the writer is acknowledged to be very great indeed. In
the compass of a work of this type it is impossible to name them or give
them credit for original or similar views, nor is it practicable to
include in the bibliography all the publications used.
Acknowledgment of assistance is made especially to Georg K. Neumann,
Joseph R. Caldwell and Melvin L. Fowler, Milton D. Thompson, Ruth Kerr,
Nora Deuel and Orvetta Robinson for reading and discussing the
manuscript from various viewpoints, to Dr. James B. Griffin for helpful
information on the dates of sites and of archaeological data, to Irvin
Peithmann, Southern Illinois University, for photographs furnished, for
information on sites he had discovered and the privilege of visiting
them in his company, to George Langford for photographs and data
regarding the Fisher site, to Charles Hodge for all photographs
reproduced not otherwise credited, and to Jerry Connolly, Bettye
Broyles, Barbara Parmalee and Jeanne McCarty for their excellent
drawings. Without all this considerable and valuable aid the publication
could not have been completed.