by Gregory Vogel

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2008 March 12
The Old Archaic and the New

            In archeological terms, "archaic" means more than just old.  It refers to a specific time period from about 8,000 to 1,000 B.C., when people in North America were adapting to environmental changes after the last great ice age.  Archeologists used to think that people during Archaic times lived simple lives lacking sophisticated political or social institutions.  The hallmark of scientific thinking, however, is the ability to revise our ideas about the world in light of new evidence.  Our ideas about people during the Archaic have greatly advanced over the last few decades, due in large part to several sites in western Illinois.  The famous Koster site in Greene County is only one of many villages from this region that have re-shaped our thinking about this time period. 

            Before we understand the people we first need to understand something about the natural environment they inhabited.  At this time the great ice sheets had melted, and the spruce forests that had covered much of Illinois moved north with them to be replaced by grasslands and hardwood forests more adapted to the warmer climate.  The mammoths, mastodons, and other giant ice-age beasts were extinct, but buffalo, deer, elk, and other animals thrived in the new woodlands.

            Geological evidence shows that the entire valley of the lower Illinois River was one gigantic lake at the beginning of Archaic times, stretching as far south as Grafton and all the way north to Peoria.  By about 7,000 B.C. much of this lake had drained, but the valley still held large tracts of wetlands and backwater lakes, perfect environments for fish, mussels, water birds, and other valuable resources.
           
            It isn't surprising that backwater and wetland resources are found at Archaic period archeological sites in this area.  Fish bones, fish scales, and mussel shells are particularly common in cooking hearths.  The fish were caught in nets or funneled into wooden or stone weirs constructed in the backwaters.  Nuts and nutshells are a common find at Archaic sites too, mostly hickory nuts, walnuts, and pecans.  These are so abundant, in fact, that some archeologists speculate that Archaic people practiced arboriculture – tree farming.    

            The tools made during Archaic times are diverse and include axes, mortars and pestles, and other tools made from hard rocks with the use of a new grinding technology.  Large stone axes with a groove for hafting them to a handle were used for felling trees and working wood into houses and other structures.  These axes are finely made and can be quite large, some of them weighing ten pounds or more.  Even with modern powered grinding tools it takes a great deal of time to reproduce similar stone axes.   

            Stone spearheads and knives were chipped out of chert or flint, and there are dozens of distinctive types made during Archaic times.  One is named Kampsville Barbed after the Illinois town where this type of artifact was first described.  Kampsville Barbed points are usually a few inches long and shaped like elongated triangles, with distinctive projections or "barbs" where they were attached to the end of a knife or spear.  A slightly older type of point, named Hardin Barbed, is found in this area too, but is actually named after Hardin County. 

            While earlier populations during Paleoindian times appear to have lived a mostly nomadic life, Archaic people gathered in larger communities and began to build permanent villages.  The Koster site holds one of these early villages with evidence of houses and a cemetery.  We know that Archaic people had pets too, because there are several dog burials within the Koster cemetery – the earliest known dog burials in North America.

            The earliest Archaic cemeteries are all similar, with individuals buried in an oval-shaped pits.  These burials, along with other evidence from houses and villages, indicate that there were few or no social or political differences between people; everyone had pretty much the same status and equal access to food and other resources.  Anthropologists refer to this as an egalitarian social system.

            Towards the end of the Archaic period there are great differences between burials with some containing elaborate grave goods, including copper artifacts that come from the Great Lakes region.  From this evidence, and differences between artifacts found in individual households, it appears that a much more elaborate political system had developed, and some individuals or families had a higher social class than others.  Burial mounds and temple mounds constructed during the Archaic, some of them quite large, also suggest a well-organized political system, necessary to mobilize and manage large groups of workers. 

            When archaeologists first began writing about the Archaic period in the 1930s, it was characterized as a time when people led simple lives in small, somewhat isolated groups, without elaborate social institutions or political interactions.  We now know that this is not the case, and as we continue to study this time period, a much more complex picture emerges.  Just as Archaic people were developing more sophisticated technology and social institutions, so archeologists are developing more sophisticated ideas about them.  Archeology is advancing so quickly, in fact, that before long our current ideas themselves may seem archaic.