Booker Site facts for kids

The Booker Site is an important archaeological spot in Pike County, Illinois. It's located in a low-lying area called Sny Bottom, which is part of the big Mississippi Valley. In 1990, experts from the Center for American Archaeology started looking into the site. Digging, or "excavations," officially began in 1993.

Where is the Booker Site?

The Booker Site is found in the Mississippi Valley's Sny Bottom. This area got its name because the Mississippi River used to wind around a lot here. The land around the site has many natural piles of dirt and rock. These made it a great place for ancient people to live. The site is southwest of a town called New Canton. This shows it was near other communities. The site itself sits about one meter higher than the flat land around it. It's on a small natural mound made of soil and rock deposits.

How Archaeologists Dug Up the Site

When archaeologists first planned to dig at the Booker Site, they wanted to make two long, narrow trenches. Each trench would have small 1 x 2 meter test squares. But then they found something amazing: an ancient Mississippian building! Because of this discovery, they decided not to dig the North-South trench.

For the first two squares, they dug down 20 centimeters at a time. They used a screen with 1/2 inch holes to sift through the dirt. This helped them find small artifacts. They also took 10-liter soil samples from each level for "flotation." This process helps find tiny plant remains or seeds. For the rest of the squares, they dug in smaller 10-centimeter levels.

They also looked closely at the soil layers. In the top layer, called the A horizon, they found dark yellowish-brown clay. The layer below it, the B horizon, had a lot of natural gravel. This told them that the Booker Site had a type of soil called Goss soil. This soil was covered by layers of dirt brought in by floods.

What They Found: Artifacts and Remains

Stone Tools and Materials

The Booker Site didn't have many stone tools, also called "lithic" materials. Only fourteen pieces of chert were found. These included arrow points, broken tool pieces, sharpened flakes, and a scraper. Most of these stone items were found inside the ancient house. Some were also found in other special areas. All the stone tools were made from local types of rock called Burlington or Keokuk chert. Archaeologists also found pieces of burned and unburned limestone. There was also a lot of natural gravel.

Pottery Pieces

Archaeologists found 481 pieces of pottery at the Booker Site. These pieces are called "sherds." Most of them were made with crushed shell mixed into the clay. They also found a jar handle and a bowl from a ceramic pipe. About half of the pottery pieces were parts of jar rims. The rest were pieces from plates and bowls.

Most of the jars found were plain, meaning they had no designs or decorations. Plates were the second most common type of pottery. Many of these plates were black on the inside. Their outsides were either black or brown. The bowls found were usually brown on both the inside and outside. Some bowl rims were flat, while others were rounded. The pottery found at Booker is similar to pottery from other ancient sites. These include the Sand Prairie phase, the Pearl phase, and the Larson and Crabtree phases.

Daub: Ancient Building Material

Daub is a thick piece of baked clay. At the Booker Site, daub was found on the floor of the ancient building. This daub was black and had some organic materials mixed in. Its surfaces were uneven and had small pieces of chert inside. The presence of daub suggests it was used to make the floor more stable and strong.

Animal Bones and Shells

Archaeologists recovered sixteen pieces of animal bones. Six of these bones were burned, and ten were unburned. Most of the bones were parts of deer jaws. They also found fragments of mussel shells. These finds help us understand what ancient people ate.

Figuring Out the Site's Age

Radiocarbon Dating

To find out how old the Booker Site was, archaeologists used a method called Radiocarbon dating. This technique measures how much of a special type of carbon (Carbon-14) is left in something. This helps them figure out how long ago the living thing died.

They collected wood charcoal samples from the ancient building and other features. These samples were sent to a lab for testing. The results from two samples were averaged. This gave them a date of about 575 years ago. This means the Booker Site was used in the 14th century. This dating method helped archaeologists learn that people lived at the Booker Site around the 1300s.

Other Sites Nearby

The Booker Site is very similar to another important site called the McFarland Site. The McFarland Site is the largest Mississippian site in Sny Bottom. Like the Booker Site, parts of the McFarland Site were also damaged. The Booker Site was affected by vandals and road construction. The McFarland Site was damaged by deep plowing.

Even with the damage, digging at the McFarland Site showed how much it was like the Booker Site. Early studies showed that most of the pottery at McFarland was made up of jars. The pottery found there also looked like the pottery from the Sand Prairie, Pearl, Larson, and Crabtree phases. This is just like the pottery found at the Booker Site.

Why the Booker Site is Important

After the excavations in 1993, archaeologists decided the Booker Site was a small farmstead. A "farmstead" is like a small farm with a house. At first, archaeologists thought the site might be a burial mound. This was because old changes to the land made it look like a mound.

Archaeologists compared the Booker Site to many other sites in Sny Bottom. All these sites had similar features. This led them to conclude that the Booker Site was indeed used as a farmstead. They didn't find clear evidence of who lived there. But by studying the pottery, they believe the site was part of the Mississippian period. This was a time when a large Native American culture thrived in the Mississippi Valley.