MIDDLE MISSISSIPPI A.D. 1420±200 Crable Village Illinois Fulton
MIDDLE MISSISSIPPI 1326±250 Nodena Village Arkansas Arkansas
MIDDLE MISSISSIPPI 1156±200 Cahokia Illinois Madison
EFFIGY MOUND[2] 1041±212 Effigy Mounds Iowa Allamakee
National Park
HOPEWELLIAN 508±60 Twenhafel Illinois Jackson
(Weber) Md.
HOPEWELLIAN 432±200 Rutherford Illinois Hardin
Mound
HOPEWELLIAN 256±200 Knight Mound Illinois Calhoun
HOPEWELLIAN 214±250 Baehr Mound Illinois Brown
HOPEWELLIAN[2] B.C. 48±160 Hopewellian Ohio Ross
Group Mound #25
HOPEWELLIAN[3] 57±108 Wilson Mound Illinois White
HOPEWELLIAN 315±164 Havana Mound Illinois Mason
ADENA 423±150 Toepfner Mound Ohio Franklin
#I
ADENA 697±170 Dover Mound Kentucky Mason
ARCHAIC 704±80 Poverty Point Louisiana W. Carroll
(N.E.) Parish
ADENA 826±410 Toepfner Mound Ohio Franklin
#II
ARCHAIC 904±90 Poverty Point Louisiana W. Carroll
(N.E.) Parish
ARCHAIC 1624±300 Kays Landing Tennessee Humphrey
ARCHAIC[2] 2170±215 Indian Knoll Kentucky Ohio
ARCHAIC[2] 2360±270 Annis Mound Kentucky Butler
ARCHAIC 2765±300 Modoc Rock Illinois Randolph
Shelter
ARCHAIC 2812±250 Perry Site Alabama Lauderdale
(N.W.)
ARCHAIC 2950±250 Annis Shell Kentucky Butler
Mound
ARCHAIC 3325±300 Modoc Rock Illinois Randolph
Shelter
ARCHAIC 3352±300 Indian Knoll Kentucky Ohio
ARCHAIC 3646±400 Oconto Old Wisconsin Oconto
Copper Site (E.)
ARCHAIC[2] 3657±164 Modoc Rock Illinois Randolph
Shelter
ARCHAIC 5194±500 Eva Site Tennessee Benton
ARCHAIC 5556±400 Oconto Old Wisconsin Oconto
Copper Site (E.)
ARCHAIC 5945±500 Graham Cave Missouri Montgomery
ARCHAIC 6204±300 Russell Cave Alabama Jackson
ARCHAIC[2] 6219±388 Modoc Rock Illinois Randolph
Shelter
ARCHAIC 7310±352 Graham Cave Missouri Montgomery
ARCHAIC 7922±392 Modoc Rock Illinois Randolph
Shelter
PALEO-INDIAN 7934±350 Lubbock Site Texas Lubbock
(Folsom)[2] (N.W.)
PALEO-INDIAN 18,000 Sandia Cave New Mexico Bernalillo
(Sandia) (Center)
PALEO-INDIAN (?) 22,000 Tule Spring Nevada Clark
Site (S.E.)
PALEO-INDIAN 35,000 Lewisville Site Texas Denton
(Clovis?)[4]
[1]These dates are selected as giving a significant picture of sequence
and contemporaneity of cultures. Dates based on shell specimens are
excluded on account of their general unreliability. Adena sites are
not included after 400 B.C. These are burial mounds and with their
inferred customs may be present in two or more cultural units rather
than constitute a feature characteristic of one.
[2]An average of at least two dates for this period.
[3]Average of three out of four dates. Libby’s second date disregarded
as widely out of line.
[4]Two samples gave identical results. Cultural identification as Clovis
based on single spearhead is doubtful.
PALEO-INDIANS, BIG GAME HUNTERS, DISCOVER A NEW WORLD (50,000? to
8,000? B.C.)[5]
Man probably discovered America as early as 50,000 years ago and
gradually occupied the two continents in the succeeding millenia. The
first discoverers of the New World were of Mongolian racial stock as are
the American Indians. They crossed from Siberia to Alaska over an
existing land bridge, over ice, or possibly by wading or by boat over
the shallow sea in the wake of mammoth, mastodon or musk ox herds on
whose flesh they lived. Following in the path of the huge animals, they
made their way possibly up the Yukon from its mouth to the divide,
thence down into the Mackenzie Basin, and along a great river where now
exist a chain of lakes and so into the Mississippi Valley.
The migrants trailing each herd doubtless traveled in their several ways
in family groups, uniting from time to time to trap and kill one of the
great shaggy beasts. When the animals stopped, the families bedded down
nearby in the most sheltered spots available taking care not to lose
touch with the herd. These were wanderers, not explorers, nor were they
seeking new homes; they were hunters that traveled where the herd led.
[Illustration: Fig. 1. Archaic flint drill, stone hammer, and flint
scraper as used in Archaic period and their modern steel
counterparts. (B.B.)]
[Illustration: Fig. 2. Paleo-Indians attack a mired-down mammoth.
(B.G.P.)]
[Illustration: Fig. 3. Paleo-Indian spearheads from the William
Small collection. A, B, and C are Clovis points; D, a Folsom point.
All are from Illinois.]
Their belongings, by our standards, were pitifully few, their way of
life laborious, full of hardship and danger, but their needs were simple
and their means of meeting them doubtless seemed ample to these hardy
hunters. The chief weapon was a thrusting spear with a chipped flint
head and a long shaft to keep the hunter as far from harm’s way as
possible when attacking the dangerous animal. The narrow width of the
spearpoint made it easy to withdraw from a wound and attack again. Our
evidence that the Paleo-Indians (as the Big Game Hunters are commonly
called) lived in Illinois are these same spearheads (Clovis and Folsom
types), usually grooved or fluted lengthwise of the blade, which are
scattered over much of the Illinois prairie as isolated finds. No
campsites of this people have yet been discovered in Illinois, as they
have been in Pennsylvania, Alabama and several southwestern states. We
can only surmise that in Illinois the hunters also had stone hammers and
chipped flint scrapers as they had elsewhere.
Having arrived in the great central valley between the Rocky Mountains
and the eastern ranges, the herds probably moved slowly from one
browsing ground to another in the open corridor between glaciers. It may
have taken them many years to reach what is now the United States.
Eventually the herds wandered back and forth across the Mississippi
Valley, and some favorable spots came to be used as camping grounds
again and again by the same or different families. Such places would
appeal immediately to the campers because of their protection from rain
and the piercing glacial winds, the presence of a plentiful supply of
wood and water. The possibility of our gaining a better knowledge of
Paleo-Indian life in Illinois rests on the discovery of such a site,
difficult now to recognize because it may no longer provide wood, water,
or shelter of any sort.
There are in southern Illinois a number of simple linear stone piles
known locally as “stone forts,” all in the same type of land structure.
Each forms an obstruction five to fifteen feet in height across a narrow
neck or ridge leading to the plateau top of a near-vertical-sided
“promontory” projecting out into a stream valley, making an excellent
corral, with no fence necessary except across the entrance. They may
have been used in late Paleo-Indian times and on into the Archaic period
for impounding large game and/or driving them over the cliff.