McCullough displays a magnetometry survey of the cornfield. The data suggest there were at least two dozen structures on this site. Photo by Fred Zwicky Delete Edit embedded media in the Files Tab and re-insert as needed.

HEYWORTH, Ill. – When I get to the archaeological site, I’m surprised to see that it’s in the middle of a cornfield. Dusty furrows studded with tiny sprigs of corn come to within about 10 feet of the dig. The researchers are already here, gently peeling back their tarps, assembling their gear, getting ready for another day.

The tarps cover the excavation of one of about two dozen dwellings that stood on this site roughly 800 years ago. A short distance away, another team works on a second house.

It’s a brilliantly sunny day – and windy. I tighten the strings holding the straw hat on my head.

Researchers found an intact, double-pointed knife blade at the site. Photo by Fred Zwicky Delete Edit embedded media in the Files Tab and re-insert as needed.

Illinois State Archaeological Survey assistant director for special projects Bob McCullough greets me and tells me to watch my step as I maneuver around the tarps. Some of the excavation trenches under the tarps are four feet deep. Some cut through walls of the dwelling; others reveal the contents of former storage pits.

For three years now, the owner of this land has allowed teams from ISAS and Illinois State University to excavate and record what’s left of this ancient settlement. The scientists and students have access only to the foundations of the 800-year-old village, as plows have erased everything else. Looters, too, have damaged the site.

The team took an aerial photograph of the site at the beginning of their work. Dark stains show the extent of the house and storage and refuse pits. Photo courtesy Illinois State Archaeological Survey Delete Edit embedded media in the Files Tab and re-insert as needed.

Everyone here has a task. Graduate student Erin Benson is busy with a shovel in one corner of the house. Archaeological technician Daniel Smith expands the borders of a tiny, rectangular trench. Doug Jackson, a semi-retired field archeologist, collects data in a notebook. Cale Scott, an archaeological specialist, screens soil samples at one edge of the dig.

Researchers and volunteers collect smaller artifacts by screening soil from the excavations. Photo by Fred Zwicky Delete Edit embedded media in the Files Tab and re-insert as needed.

ISAS field archaeologist Marie Meizis stops her work to show me how to read the soil. She points to a dark intrusion extending vertically down from the surface in one of the researchers’ trenches.

“You’re looking at a section through a wall trench,” she says. The wood and other materials that composed the wall have disintegrated, leaving only this dark stain.

Dark patches like these – along with more advanced technologies that can read the differing mineral and magnetic composition of the soil – give researchers a good idea of the outlines of the homes.

The archaeological team works in a newly planted cornfield. Photo by Fred Zwicky Delete Edit embedded media in the Files Tab and re-insert as needed.

Two cultures intermingled in this village, McCullough tells me: The Mississippian, which has artifacts spread across much of the lower Mississippi River Valley; and the Langford.

“The Langford, they don’t belong here; they belong up around Chicago,” he says.

It’s unusual to find a Langford presence this far south, he says. It’s also surprising to see a village from this time period on the prairie, a good distance from major waterways.

ISAS assistant director for special projects Bob McCullough collects data. Photo by Fred Zwicky Delete Edit embedded media in the Files Tab and re-insert as needed.

This village was active in the 1300s, a time of upheaval in the region. An ancient metropolis known as Cahokia that once thrived in and around present-day St. Louis – about 150 miles from here – was abandoned by A.D. 1350. Evidence from a cemetery from this era in Fulton County showed that about 40 percent of the adult population died from arrow wounds, decapitations or blunt-force trauma.

The team also recovered a type of axe head, called a celt, from the dwelling. Photo by Fred Zwicky Delete Edit embedded media in the Files Tab and re-insert as needed.

“That period in prehistory was very violent,” Jackson tells me when I ask him about the unusual location of this village. “This would be a good place to hide.”

I spend a little time at one of the screening stations looking at items recovered from the site, including a charred bean. Scott tells me the team has found copper beads, tobacco seeds, pieces of flint tools and burnt corn and beans. If the people who lived here centuries ago hadn’t overcooked the beans and corn, those remnants would never have survived this long, McCullough says.

“We benefit from people’s cooking mistakes,” he says.

I look up to see that a small crowd has gathered around Smith and his tiny trench. Even the students from the other dig site are here, peering over his shoulder.

Smith has uncovered what looks like an intact ceramic jar – a rarity, he tells me later. He had been carefully enlarging his little trench because he was trying to determine the relationship between two, overlapping storage pits, to see which one came first, for example.

Archaeological technician Daniel Smith discovered a nearly intact pot, a rare find. Photo by Fred Zwicky Delete Edit embedded media in the Files Tab and re-insert as needed.

“I’ve worked in eastern Illinois for seven years and it’s the first time I’ve found an intact pot,” he tells me. The jar is still half buried. He uses a tiny trowel and both ends of a spoon to carefully remove the soil from underneath the pot.

ISAS assistant director for special projects Bob McCullough sweeps debris from an ancient refuse pit. Several elk bones jut from the wall of the excavation trench. Photo by Fred Zwicky Delete Edit embedded media in the Files Tab and re-insert as needed.

McCullough calls me and photographer Fred Zwicky over to a second screening station to show us a collection of larger objects the team found here this year. The first is an elk leg bone carved into a tool for scraping hides. Elk and deer were once abundant, as evidenced by the many bones found across this site. The giant vertebrae of elk poke out of one of the trenches the team dug through a storage or refuse pit.

Next, we see a double-pointed knife blade made of white chert. Then, a stone axe head, called a celt. It is made of diorite, a durable igneous rock that is not quite as hard as granite. Its maker would have had to grind it down to make this perfectly beveled shape, a process that probably took weeks, McCullough says. There also is a red clay pipe and some pieces of ceramic jars.

The ceramic bits, called sherds, are the clearest evidence of the intermingling of Mississippian and Langford cultures here, McCullough says. Mississippian pottery was tempered with crushed mussel shells, while the Langford peoples used crushed rock.

“That technology defines who they are,” McCullough says.

Researchers found the leg bone of an elk that had been carved into a hide scraper. Photo by Fred Zwicky Delete Edit embedded media in the Files Tab and re-insert as needed.

About an hour after he found it, Smith finally extracts the pot from its trench. It’s all there, but broken in half, with one half overlapping the other. He scrapes the soil from the top face of the jar but leaves the rest of the soil inside. He carefully measures the jar: It’s about 5 inches in diameter and 4 inches tall. With help from other members of the team, he wraps it in aluminum foil and places it upside down on a board. Further processing will occur in the lab.

Smith says that the pot is in the Langford tradition; it is tempered with crushed stone, not shell, and the lip shape corresponds to the Langford style.

“The fact that it’s intact is just luck,” he says.

McCullough sweeps the dust from an elk vertebral bone found in a refuse pit. Photo by Fred Zwicky Delete Edit embedded media in the Files Tab and re-insert as needed.

The researchers hope that the luck that brought them here will allow them to return to this site in future seasons. In general, archaeological ruins on private property in Illinois are not protected by law unless they occur in zones that are to be converted into highways, bridges or expressways, or involve state or federal funding, McCullough says. In those cases, the state must call in the archaeologists for an examination of the cultural heritage of the sites. Those investigations have pieced together the remarkable “prehistory” of the state. This history would have been lost were it not for teams like this one.