The Myer-Dickson Phase and Late Woodland in WestCentral Illinois
Michael D. Conner
Dickson Mounds Museum–Illinois State Museum
Presented at the 2010 Midwest Archaeological Conference
Bloomington, Indiana
Not for citation without permission of author
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The Dickson Mounds site in Fulton County, Illinois, is of course
best known for its Mississippian burial population. Although Don
Dickson’s original burial exhibit was closed in 1992, Dickson
Mounds Museum continues to thrive due to the investment made
in the late 1960s to construct a new museum building several
times larger than the original facility. Construction required
excavation of about 20,000 m2 in and adjacent to the mortuary
area. Although considerable work was done over the years on the
material generated in these excavations, a thorough analysis has
never been completed. Hopefully, that task will be accomplished in
the next few years. I’m reporting today on some preliminary
results from the Late Woodland component in the habitation area,
known as the Myer-Dickson portion of the Dickson Mounds site.
The sample primarily includes features and structures
excavated for the new building and the parking lot to the north.
Work for the building included excavation of burials around those
in the exhibit, but the mortuary and habitation areas were
generally distinct. A few burials were found among habitation
features at the north end of the main mortuary area, but none
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were found north of this point, and habitation features were not
found among the burials. The habitation data also includes
excavations carried out to the west and northwest for a road and a
sewage lagoon, a structure excavated in the early 1960s in the
field east of the museum, and a few pit features excavated in the
main area during renovations in the early 1990s.
The main Myer-Dickson area included 395 pit features and 13
structures. Six additional structures and 70 pit features were
excavated at the sewage lagoon, along the roadway, and in the
east field.
Two major components are present in the main area: Late
Woodland and Mississippian; no Late Woodland features were
found in the other site areas. The Mississippian component dates
to about A.D. 1100 to 1250; no transitional Late Woodland to
Early Mississippian material was found in the habitation area,
though Eveland phase burials are present in the mortuary area.
There are more than twice as many Late Woodland features as
Mississippian, 108 vs. 45, but also 242 indeterminate features,
which contained either no ceramics or less than 5 sherds. Many of
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the indeterminate pits are probably Late Woodland, as will be
discussed later. All of the structures are Mississippian, and there
was no evidence of a sub-plow-zone midden except in a small area
of the southeast part of the site. One Early Woodland Marion
feature was also found.
Ceramics and radiocarbon dates suggest one major Late
Woodland component dating to ca. A.D. 600 to 800, as will be
discussed more fully later. The assemblage is generally
homogeneous. Of 7,116 non-shell-tempered sherds, all have grit
except four body sherds with sand. 65 vessels are typed as MyerDickson, first defined by Harn (1991). Of the Myer-Dickson
vessels, 26% have a dark mafic grit, 29% have light-colored grit,
and 45% have both grit types. Fifty-six vessels are cordmarked to
the lip, usually with some degree of smoothing; only seven vessels
are plain at the lip. Among all sherds, only 629 are plain, and at
least 153 of these are from one Adams tradition vessel. This
suggests there were few entirely plain vessels, and there is no
direct evidence of Myer-Dickson vessels with cordmarked and
plain areas, as is characteristic of Adams tradition vessels. Of
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vessels with cordmarking, 85% have S twist and 15% Z twist.
Three vessels are Adams tradition forms, possibly from later use
of the site.
Several large vessel sections and one nearly complete vessel,
along with a number of other rims for which form could be
determined, indicate the most common vessel form was a
composite jar with an everted upper rim, a well-defined neck, and
a rounded shoulder. The bases are subcondoidal but the bodies
trend towards globular. One small rim could be from a simple
bowl or an inverted-rim jar, and one nearly complete vessel is an
inverted-rim jar. However, this vessel was found broken in
Mississippian grave fill, so its relationship to the Myer-Dickson
component is uncertain. Some straight rims could be from either
vessel type.
Decoration on the Myer-Dickson type vessels is limited to lip
impressions. These are found on about 82% of the vessels. Of those
vessels with lip impressions, 50% are on the exterior only and 40%
are on the interior only; one vessel has them in both locations, and
four have impressions that cross cut the lip. Over 50% of the
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impressions were made with a plain dowel and 32% with a cordwrapped stick. The former are more common on the interior while
the latter are more common on the exterior. There are minor
amounts of other punctation types.
A full picture of activities at the site must await further study.
The botanical remains are currently being analyzed under the
supervision of Amber VanDerwarker at the University of
California Santa Barbara, and other analyses are ongoing.
Available data point to either a small long-term occupation or
repeated use of the site for a variety of activities. A number of
feature types are present, including large bell-shaped features,
ones with straight sides and flat bottoms, as well as the always
ubiquitous basins. The features classified as bell low are pits with
areas near the base dug back to create a bell shape, possibly from
scraping material from the sides after use.
On average, Mississippian features are about three times
larger than Late Woodland pits and the indeterminate pits are
smaller still. One line of evidence suggests a majority of the
indeterminate pits are from the Late Woodland occupation. The
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density of sandstone and igneous rocks in the Late Woodland pits
is five to nine time greater than in the Mississippian features. The
average densities in the indeterminate pits is about half of the
Late Woodland value.s
Late Woodland features are densest in the southeastern part of
the site area, with scattered pits to the north. Including
indeterminate pits in the map increases the density to the north.
It also accentuates a curious pattern: a lack of Late Woodland pits
in what would be a plaza during the Mississippian occupation in
the 1200s.
There is no easy explanation for this pattern. It is possible that
both groups used the same area for a plaza, possibly due to
topographic considerations. This would imply that the Late
Woodland community plan was similar to some Weaver sites, with
households arrayed in a circle around a central plaza. However,
the lack of midden and no evidence of Late Woodland structures
makes such a scenario unlikely. At the Rench site, McConaughy
noted that large pits, presumably for storage, were placed around
the margins of each habitation zone. If the Myer-Dickson
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community were arranged in a similar fashion to Rench, one
would expect large pits to be distributed around the ring of pit
distribution. However, this is not the case. The 17 pits over 250 l
are confined to the south half of the site where definite Late
Woodland pits are concentrated. This was obviously the most
intense occupation area. Pits to the north and west may indicate
peripheral activity areas or temporally distinct uses of the site.
Still the lack of pits in the Mississippian plaza seems too stark
to be just a matter of chance distribution. Either the Late
Woodland occupants avoided the area for some unknown reason or
the Mississippian people dug out and capped any earlier pits in
the plaza and this landscaping was missed during excavation.
However, Alan Harn, who directed the excavations, does not think
the latter explanation is likely.
A variety of Late Woodland point types were recovered. The
most common are medium-sized Koster corner-notched with 15.
There are also examples of Steuben, Ansell, Klunk, and Maples
Mills points. All were predominately found in either Late
Woodland or culturally indeterminate contexts. Some smaller
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side-notched arrow points and the Adams tradition pottery could
be evidence of minor use of the site during later Late Woodland
times. The three Adams vessels (one large vessel section and two
punctated shoulder sherds) were in three contexts (two pit
features and a house wall trench) separated by 60-80 m outside
the main Late Woodland pit concentration. Neither of the pit
features contained significant or diagnostic other Woodland
pottery but one contained six Mississippian sherds.
Four radiocarbon dates were obtained from the site; their
calibrated median probabilities range from the late 500s to the
late 700s. The two youngest dates are somewhat suspect as they
were obtained from features inside Mississippian house basins
that contained only Woodland pottery. However, Fishel (2009)
recently reported four additional dates from two sites with small
Myer-Dickson phase components north of Peoria. These dates
generally confirm the range seen at the Myer-Dickson site, though
one may be too old.
The Myer-Dickson phase dates, when compared to those from
the nearby Rench Weaver occupation, indicate that the phase is
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immediately post Weaver. There are significant ceramic
differences between Weaver and Myer-Dickson: a change in jar
form from more elongate to more globular bodies; a dramatic
reduction in the frequency of plain vessels (about 80% of the
Rench vessels were plain); the restriction of decorations to the lip
rather than the lip and upper rim area; a reduction in the variety
tools used for lip decorations; and a more balanced placement of
lip decorations on the interior and exterior of vessels. However,
the lip thickness on rim sherds is about the same: 5 mm for
Weaver Plain at Rench, 5.5 for Weaver Cordmaked, and 5 for
Myer-Dickson.
The Myer-Dickson settlement system is unknown. Despite the
significant occupation at the Myer-Dickson site and the numerous
excavations at Woodland and Mississippian sites in the region, the
25 features at the three sites reported by Fishel represent the only
other well-documented Myer-Dickson phase occupations.
In summary, with the advent of more complete data, Harn’s
(1991) and Esarey’s (2000) assessment of the Myer-Dickson phase
as immediately post-Weaver in timing and ceramic style is
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confirmed. Harn (1991) earlier proposed a relationship between
Myer-Dickson and the Sepo tradition, the Late Woodland ceramics
found with early Mississippian Eveland phase materials in the
region around A.D. 1050. However, based on the data now
available, I (and Harn) would agree with Esarey (2000) that MyerDickson has no readily apparent relationship to Sepo.
The Myer-Dickson pottery does share characteristics with
contemporary manifestations in nearby regions: Early Bluff in the
lower Illinois Valley and the Patrick phase in the American
Bottom. Pottery is cordmarked to the lip, decoration is restricted
to lip punctations, plain dowel and cord-wrapped-stick punctations
are most common, composite jars predominate but simple,
inverted-rim jars are also present, and probable true arrow points
make their appearance. Not enough is known about Early Bluff to
talk about differences for that type, but there are some between
Patrick vessels and Myer-Dickson. Patrick vessels show a minor
amount of noding and other rim decorations, a lower percentage of
lip punctations (40-60% vs. 80%), and lip punctations are
restricted to the interior.
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Early Bluff and Patrick are generally seen as the forerunners of
later Late Woodland and Emergent Mississippian cultures in the
lower Illinois Valley and the American Bottom. Following the
Myer-Dickson phase in different parts of the central valley are the
Maples Mills phase and the Bauer Branch phase, or something
related to it with Adams tradition pottery. There may be some
temporal overlap between Bauer Branch and Myer-Dickson, at
least based on dates from the Sugar Creek locality, but the Maples
Mills phase, with its elaborate cord-impressed pottery, probably
completely postdates it. The unique characteristics of Bauer
Branch/Adams tradition pottery (shoulder punctating, hipped
shoulder) and Maples Mills are not foreshadowed in Myer-Dickson
pottery, however, though a relationship between them cannot be
ruled out.
Some of have noted the similarity between Myer-Dickson
ceramics and those from the Deer Track site near Quincy in the
Mississippi Valley. Ceramics from there fall within types seen at
other Late Woodland sites in the Sny Bottom, mostly notably Fall
Creek Cordmarked. There is also some overlap between the dates
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for the Fall Creek and Poisson phases in the Sny and MyerDickson.
Jar form and frequency of lip decorations are similar in MyerDickson and Fall Creek Cordmarked, though the latter exhibits
more variation in vessel form. However, jointed-grass stem
impressions are common, as are impressions that cross-cut the lip.
In addition, almost every FCC vessel has sand temper; grit, both
mafic and light, was added to sand in only 18% of vessels, and
chert was added in about 50%. Although FCC vessels are
predominately cordmarked to the lip, some have bands of
smoothing on the neck or plain areas above the shoulder,
something not seen in Myer-Dickson. Also, no pure FCC
components have been identified in the Sny Bottom. All excavated
sites (about a dozen) have 12 to 30% related types with rim
punctations or cord-impressed designs. Thus, even though there is
a general similarity between Myer-Dickson and FCC, they differ
in significant ways.
It is possible that Myer-Dickson has some relationship to the
advent of Fall Creek Cordmarked and the development of the
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robust Late Woodland presence in the Sny Bottom. However, if it
does, one would expect to find Myer-Dickson pottery in upland
areas between the two regions. As of now, there is no evidence of
such occupations. Early Bluff would be an equally likely precusor
to Fall Creek Cordmarked.
Although the final analysis of the Myer-Dickson site will
provide additional information on the occupation, until we can
obtain more data on the phase’s distribution, the site will remain
an enigmatic anomaly.
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