Spring Creek Site facts for kids

The Spring Creek Site (also known as 20MU3) is an important archaeological site in Michigan, USA. It is located in Muskegon County in the western part of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. This site is special because it helps archaeologists understand a certain type of pottery. This pottery was made by the Ottawa tribe during the Late Woodland period.

What is the Spring Creek Site?

The Spring Creek Site is a place where people lived a very long time ago. Archaeologists study sites like this to learn about past cultures. This site is known for its unique pottery. It helps experts identify similar pottery found in other places.

Digging Up the Past: The Excavations

The Michigan Archaeology Society started digging at the Spring Creek Site in 1955. They continued their work in 1956. Their discoveries quickly became famous. This was because they found a huge amount of pottery pieces.

The archaeologists dug up about 3,000 square feet of land. They found pieces, called sherds, from 966 different pottery pots! This was a lot more than the stone tools they found. They only found 344 stone tools in total. These included lithic cores, bifaces, scrapers, and lithic flakes.

What Did the Finds Tell Us?

The large number of pottery pieces compared to stone tools was a big clue. It suggested that the village was a year-round home for many women. It was probably not just a seasonal hunting camp used only by men.

The pottery found at Spring Creek was very similar in style. This sameness helped archaeologists. They could use it to figure out the age of similar pottery from other sites. This is done using a method called radiocarbon dating.

Life at Spring Creek Village

People lived at the Spring Creek Site around the 10th century AD. This was during the Woodland period. The village was typical of those in the Great Lakes area. The people living there both farmed and hunted for food.

Archaeologists found very few animal bones at the site. There were only enough to feed about three people for a year. But other clues showed that many people lived there. This means that most of the meat eaten at Spring Creek was probably prepared somewhere else.

How Ottawa Villages Worked

Traditional Ottawa villages were often home to women and older men for most of the year. The younger men would often leave the village. They would form hunting parties and go on long trips. These trips happened in both summer and winter. Only those who couldn't hunt would stay in the village all year.

Why Spring Creek is Important

The Spring Creek Site is considered one of the best examples of a semi-permanent Ottawa village. This means people lived there for a long time, but not always in the same spot.

It is very different from other sites, like the Juntunen Site in northern Michigan. At Juntunen, archaeologists found many different kinds of pottery. But at Spring Creek, the pottery styles were very much alike.

These two sites also had different uses. Juntunen was likely a hunting camp used only at certain times of the year for hundreds of years. Spring Creek, however, was lived in intensely for a shorter period. By studying Spring Creek, Juntunen, and other sites along Lake Michigan, experts learn about the Ottawa people's economy during the early Late Woodland period.

A Protected Historical Site

Because of its importance to archaeology, the Spring Creek Site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. The Juntunen Site received a similar honor six years later. This helps protect these special places for future study.