New England Antiquities Research Association

 

Archeological Site Turns Up 1000's of Ancient Artifacts

Reprinted from the Belleville News

 

 

 

December 21, 2003

 

Archaeologists Doug Lewis and Raquel Ozanich examined artifacts in a Wood River lab.

The archaeological site just east of Brooklyn was so rich in artifacts diggers nicknamed it "Janey B. Goode," in honor of Chuck Berry's song, "Johnny B. Goode."

Artifacts were hauled away in sacks. Two vacant stores in Wood River were needed just for storage and study. The finds included ornamental alligator and shark teeth, quartz crystals from Arkansas, copper jewelry and a puzzling, decorated carved bison scapula, or shoulder bone.

During the spring and summer, more than a hundred diggers worked at the acre-sized location, five miles west of Cahokia Mounds State Park in Collinsville.

They unearthed about a third of the ancient fishing village, which test drilling indicated lay three to four feet below the surface along railroad tracks. The proximity to the railroad discouraged plowing and home construction and preserved the buried artifacts.

"It's the largest Mississippian village since they unearthed one when they built I-255 in the '80s," said Don Booth, excavation director and archaeologist for the non-profit Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program. "It's a major, very important site."

The excavation will continue in the spring and must be completed before construction begins on widening Illinois 3.

Booth said about 30 percent of the site has been exposed, including 50 dwelling sites, indicating the town may have been larger than the village of Brooklyn, home to about 600.

Now archaeologists must analyze thousands of bits and pieces of life from the village's beginnings in about 600 A.D., its intermittent occupation, and its abandonment around 1200.

As teams of archaeologists wash, label and study thousands of potsherds, animal bones and stone tools, one surprising aspect is beginning to emerge.

"Life was probably pretty easy," Booth said. "There was an abundance of fish and game. It's doubtful people had to work more than just a few hours a day to live well."

Booth said the town had been on the banks of a prehistoric finger of the Mississippi, which flowed over present-day Brooklyn into Horseshoe Lake, turned sharply south and drained into a swamp.

The discoveries include thousands of chunks of limestone, believed to be used to sharpen bone and antlers into tools.

Archaeologist Raquel Ozanich said the sheer volume of artifacts made excavation frustrating.

"There was so much," she said. "I was pulling my hair out every day trying to figure out what it means."

 

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