Community, Household & Landscape:

Examining Spatial Structure for Evidence of Integration
at the Morton Village Site, Fulton County, Illinois
Speaker: Nicole Marie “Nikki” Klarmann, M.A.

Social Hour/Member Meetings begin at 3:00pm.
Lectures begin at 3:30pm. All are welcome.
Evanston Public Library: Community Meeting Room,
1703 Orrington Ave, Evanston 60201
May 19, 2019 Ms. Nicole Marie Klarmann 
The Fulton Morton Village Site

Ms. Nikki Klarmann asks “What happens when two populations with differing cultural identities interact and cohabitate?”  In our final program in the lecture series this year, she will propose answers to that question based on field work at the Morton Village Site in Fulton County, Illinois.

Klarmann suggests that coalescence, or the cultural reorganization and formation of multiethnic and multilingual communities, is one possible outcome.

In archaeological contexts, material culture can help determine the level of integration or coalescence between distinct groups that interacted or cohabitated. However, it should not be assumed that a one-to-one relationship between cultural materials and people exists. In many contexts of interaction, a mixture of materials attributable to differing groups of people may be found. How then can the mixing of archaeological materials be used to identify the degree of coalescence? Beyond archaeological contexts, understanding prolonged, spatially-based interactions and coalescence has larger implications for understanding today’s cultural groups who find themselves cohabitating with other groups (e.g., post migration or as refugees) and possibly affecting policy and practice that could promote integration of these migrant or refugee groups into the larger society.

Morton Village (11F2), located in Fulton County, Illinois, is the case study for this multiscalar spatial analysis. Dating to a single occupation, ca. AD 1200 to 1400, the site provides clear evidence for the cohabitation of Middle Mississippian and Bold Counselor Phase Oneota groups.  However, the level of cultural integration at the site is under-explored. Ceramic attributes and architectural styles have typically been used to discern Oneota and Mississippian contexts. Material culture provides a valuable line of evidence for examining coalescence, but how people organized themselves spatially allows an innovative and finer contextualization of the distinctions and the merging of material culture. Research adds to the scholarship of coalescence. A multi-scalar spatial approach is employed to detect the level of coalescence within the Morton Village archaeological site, integrating data from the landscape, community, and household spatial scales. Initial findings of the case study and future directions of the research will be presented.

Nikki Klarmann, MA, originally from Texas, earned a BS in Anthropology at Baylor University. While there, she excavated in Belize. She is currently a Doctoral Candidate in Anthropology at Michigan State University. Ms. Klarmann began working at the Morton Village archaeological site in Fulton County in the summer of 2013 as part of the joint Michigan State University and Dickson Mounds Museum Archaeological Project. For five summers since 2013, she excavated at Morton Village in a variety of roles, as a research assistant, teaching assistant, public programming supervisor, graduate student mentor, and as the coordinator of excavations, also doing archaeology lab work cleaning and cataloging artifacts recovered during excavations. Klarmann’s doctoral dissertation focuses on the spatial organization of Morton Village and whether the migrant Bold Counselor Oneota and local Middle Mississippian populations had an integrated, coalesced community at Morton Village.

Eureka! There Are Two Forts Kaskaskia

Dr. Mark Wagner takes us along on SIUC Field School discovery
~ report by Deb Stelton ~

George Rogers Clark was a frontier military leader in the American Revolution whose dramatic successes were factors in the award of the Old Northwest to the United States. Trained by his grandfather, Clark engaged in surveying along the Ohio River in the mid-1770s. His historical importance leads us to an interest in Fort Kaskaskia.

Dr. Mark Wagner’s presentation on Sunday, April 28 dwelt primarily with the rediscovery of Fort Kaskaskia. Before Mark started working at the suggested site it never had been surveyed. The fort remains were on Garrison Hill on bluffs overlooking the town of Kaskaskia which overlooks the Mississippi. In 1759 it was occupied by the French who began to build the walls of the fort. It was never completed after they lost the French and Indian War in 1763. All possessions east of the Mississippi were given over to Great Britain with the Treaty of Paris. The people of Kaskaskia did not like the idea of the Brits moving into the fort, so they burned it. Consequently, the Brits moved into the town itself, providing an example of unintended consequences.

In 1780s, a “war lord,” John Dodge, occupied the area and terrorized the town, but in 1787 he was forced to flee to Missouri. In 1778 Clark surprised the British and captured the fort. It may have been a front-line century ago, but modern history has eclipsed its earlier importance. Clark captured the final British force. But for Clark, the entire Old Northwest might well be part of Canada.

The U.S. Army came to occupy the area to keep Kaskaskia safe from other foreign incursions. 120 soldiers came from Pittsburg in 1802, and in 1803, William Clark and Meriwether Lewis arrived. Lewis wrote that 120 pounds of gunpowder were stored at the fort. Clark recruited 11 or 12 soldiers from the fort to join the important Lewis and Clark expedition. But documentation is sparse. The fort seemed to be abandoned.

When Mark Wagner began excavating, he found little evidence of U.S. occupation. Then a sink hole was discovered away from the fort. Mark began to think that the American fort was elsewhere. Non-invasive scanning equipment was brought in for investigation. Patterns of green and red showed up, but you must excavate to find out what these colors mean. Available LiDAR was also very useful.

Eventually we learned that there were two forts referred to as Fort Kaskaskia. Uniform buttons, parts of muskets and other artifacts have shown us that the second fort is the one where Lewis and Clark stopped at before their momentous journey.

There is more to be learned in future digs and you can contact Dr. Wagner if you wish to participate. Shawnee teenagers are helpers as well. Archaeology students from the SIUC field school will return to the Ft. Kaskaskia and Miller Grove sites this coming summer (2019).

In doing further research for this summary, I found references to the Treaty of Paris finally having the British signing over this area to the U.S. with the idea of receiving benefits from trading.

Palimpsest Notes from Bob Stelton

Aluxe
Phantoms of the milpas

Long ago I directed a cultural field school for high school students in the Yucatan. The students and I stayed with villagers sleeping in nahs, traditional Maya houses, and taking our meals with the hosts. We learned that life in a Maya community revolves around the milpa, the agricultural field that provides sustenance and life. Making milpa, slash and burn farming a plot, carries with it historic and cultural obligations that are to the ancient Maya.

I asked a friend in the village Tinum for directions to his milpa, explaining that I would like to explore it with my students.

“Oh no,” he protested, “it would be dangerous to go there, very dangerous. There are serpents that kill and other dangers!”
“But,” our host finally relented, “you can come with me and the niño (his son) tomorrow morning.”
I had another request, “Could my students work in the field?”
He shrugged, “What’s the use, it’s too hard, but ok!”

In the field we discovered how excruciating work in the field was. Later we learned about the other danger: we learned about the Aluxe.
In Ireland they are called leprechauns, in Scandinavia trolls – they seem to have populated the globe.

That afternoon I learned something about Maya secrets – other dangers. Concealed within the Yucatan jungles are creatures of the night including the Aluxes  – troll-like creatures that usually remain hidden from human-sight. But ready to dance with a child or spring a prank on a bothersome adult!

Although Aluxes mostly live apart from men, symbiotic relationships have evolved. Ordinarily they are fearful of humans and hide from us by turning themselves into little clay figurines that hide in small mounds on the fringes of cultivated fields. It is believed that they are descended from the ancient Maya.

Like most gnomes, leprechauns – name your favorite will-o-the-wisp  – Aluxes are impish and responsible for many practical jokes and tricks. On the other hand they can be helpful. More than one lost wanderer has been led to safety by an Aluxe. Without revealing themselves and by sighs, they can direct the wanderer to the correct path. In olden times, they would notify an Indian family of a member who had been hanged (other misfortune?) by allowing them to be seen in a house and then fleeing.

There is much more to the lore of the Aluxe, one of the Yucatan’s special attraction that is seldom – if ever – seen by adults.