Mill Creek chert
Encyclopedia
Mill Creek chert is a type of chert
found in Southern Illinois and heavily exploited by members of the Mississippian culture
(800 to 1600 CE). Artifacts
made from this material are found in archeological sites throughout the American Midwest and Southeast. It is named for a village and stream near the quarrys, Mill Creek, Illinois
and Mill Creek, a tributary of the Cache River
. The chert was used extensively for the production of utilitarian tools such as hoes and spades, and for polished ceremonial objects such as bifaces, spatulate celts and maces.
is a siliceous (silica) stone, a variety of quartz
similar to flint
but more brittle. It naturally occurs as large, flat, elliptically shaped nodules
in creek beds, and sometimes as hill-top residuum. The nodules were formed as part of the Ullin limestone formation during the Mississippian geologic period (roughly 359 to 318 million years ago). Mill Creek Chert is a tough, coarse-grained chert, usually brown or gray in color, and occurs as large tabular shaped nodules, a shape used by members of the Mississippian culture
for the manufacture of broad bifaces such as hoes
, spade
s, and ceremonial maces and spuds. At the turn of the twentieth century archaeologists began realizing that in the hilly lands of Southern Illinois was the location for the quarrying and production centers, one of the greatest in prehistoric North America for this type of stone. The sites were located near Mill Creek, Illinois, a village in Union County, located between Jonesboro
and Cairo
on the Alexander County
line. From this collection of sites, known colloquially as the "Indian Diggings", Native Americans
quarried, worked into tools and blanks, and exported this stone to the wider Mississippian world. The chert found here was one of the major exported raw materials of the Mississippian culture and its distribution and procurement was one of the largest mining and production efforts organized during the Mississippian period. The raw material was dug up in the quarries and then transported to small hamlets for production in hoes, spades and blanks. Archaeologists believe they were then transported to and traded at regional mound centers such as the Hale Site, a palisade
d village with a platform mound
and a burial mound. From these local sites they were then transported and traded at sites even further afield. These materials were some of the most widely exchanged items during this period, with especially large amounts transported to the American Bottom
region. Examples are numerous at Cahokia
, where it was especially prized for hoes and spades, but finds have been made in locations as distant as Spiro
and Moundville
.
agriculture and their monumental architecture (platform mound
s, moat
s and embankments) made such tools especially valuable. Three main varieties of Mississippian culture hoes have been found, differentiated by their shape, oval, flared and notched. The oval and flared varieties were hafted to L-shaped wooden handles, such as the one wielded by the Birger figurine. The notched version was probably hafted as a spade. Another advantageous property of the Mill Creek chert was the large size of the nodules, which meant that the corresponding tools could be large. Some hoes were up to 60 centimetres (23.6 in) in length.
The other main use for the chert was large ceremonial bifaces, spatulate celts
and stone maces. These were ritual objects which often display a high degree of craftmanship. Unlike the hoes and other utilitarian tools, the ritual objects were often ground and polished to a high degree of finish. Many Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
artworks depict figures wielding these ceremonial items, especially the sword shaped ceremonial bifaces and maces. As with the hoes, these artifacts could also be quite large, with some of the swordlike bifaces being up to 50 centimetres (19.7 in) in length. These ritual objects have been found throughout the American Bottom
, the Lilbourn Site in New Madrid County, Missouri
and as far away as Spiro
and Gahagan Mounds
, Caddoan Mississippian culture
sites in Oklahoma
and Louisiana
. Although the objects are modelled after actual weapons, such as war clubs, archaeologists believe they were too delicate to function as actual weapons and instead functioned as status symbols.
Chert
Chert is a fine-grained silica-rich microcrystalline, cryptocrystalline or microfibrous sedimentary rock that may contain small fossils. It varies greatly in color , but most often manifests as gray, brown, grayish brown and light green to rusty red; its color is an expression of trace elements...
found in Southern Illinois and heavily exploited by members of the Mississippian culture
Mississippian culture
The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1500 CE, varying regionally....
(800 to 1600 CE). Artifacts
Artifact (archaeology)
An artifact or artefact is "something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, esp an object of archaeological interest"...
made from this material are found in archeological sites throughout the American Midwest and Southeast. It is named for a village and stream near the quarrys, Mill Creek, Illinois
Mill Creek, Illinois
Mill Creek is a village in Union County, Illinois, United States. The population was 76 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Mill Creek is located at ....
and Mill Creek, a tributary of the Cache River
Cache River (Illinois)
The Cache River is a waterway in southernmost Illinois, in a region sometimes called Little Egypt. The basin spans and six counties: Alexander, Johnson, Massac, Pope, Pulaski and Union. Located at the convergence of four major physiographic regions, the river is part of the largest complex of...
. The chert was used extensively for the production of utilitarian tools such as hoes and spades, and for polished ceremonial objects such as bifaces, spatulate celts and maces.
History
ChertChert
Chert is a fine-grained silica-rich microcrystalline, cryptocrystalline or microfibrous sedimentary rock that may contain small fossils. It varies greatly in color , but most often manifests as gray, brown, grayish brown and light green to rusty red; its color is an expression of trace elements...
is a siliceous (silica) stone, a variety of quartz
Quartz
Quartz is the second-most-abundant mineral in the Earth's continental crust, after feldspar. It is made up of a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall formula SiO2. There are many different varieties of quartz,...
similar to flint
Flint
Flint is a hard, sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as a variety of chert. It occurs chiefly as nodules and masses in sedimentary rocks, such as chalks and limestones. Inside the nodule, flint is usually dark grey, black, green, white, or brown in colour, and...
but more brittle. It naturally occurs as large, flat, elliptically shaped nodules
Nodule (geology)
A nodule in petrology or mineralogy is a secondary structure, generally spherical or irregularly rounded in shape. Nodules are typically solid replacement bodies of chert or iron oxides formed during diagenesis of a sedimentary rock...
in creek beds, and sometimes as hill-top residuum. The nodules were formed as part of the Ullin limestone formation during the Mississippian geologic period (roughly 359 to 318 million years ago). Mill Creek Chert is a tough, coarse-grained chert, usually brown or gray in color, and occurs as large tabular shaped nodules, a shape used by members of the Mississippian culture
Mississippian culture
The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1500 CE, varying regionally....
for the manufacture of broad bifaces such as hoes
Hoe (tool)
A hoe is an ancient and versatile agricultural tool used to move small amounts of soil. Common goals include weed control by agitating the surface of the soil around plants, piling soil around the base of plants , creating narrow furrows and shallow trenches for planting seeds and bulbs, to chop...
, spade
Spade
A spade is a tool designed primarily for the purpose of digging or removing earth. Early spades were made of riven wood. After the art of metalworking was discovered, spades were made with sharper tips of metal. Before the advent of metal spades manual labor was less efficient at moving earth,...
s, and ceremonial maces and spuds. At the turn of the twentieth century archaeologists began realizing that in the hilly lands of Southern Illinois was the location for the quarrying and production centers, one of the greatest in prehistoric North America for this type of stone. The sites were located near Mill Creek, Illinois, a village in Union County, located between Jonesboro
Jonesboro, Illinois
Jonesboro is a city in Union County, Illinois, United States. The population was 1,853 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Union County, and was the location of the third of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, on 15 September 1858.-Geography:...
and Cairo
Cairo, Illinois
Cairo is the southernmost city in the U.S. state of Illinois. It is the county seat of Alexander County. Cairo is located at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. The rivers converge at Fort Defiance State Park, an American Civil War fort that was commanded by General Ulysses S. Grant...
on the Alexander County
Alexander County, Illinois
Alexander County is a county located in the U.S. state of Illinois. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 8,238, which is a decrease of 14.1% from 9,590 in 2000. Its county seat is Cairo. Alexander County is part of the Cape Girardeau–Jackson, MO-IL Metropolitan Statistical...
line. From this collection of sites, known colloquially as the "Indian Diggings", Native Americans
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
quarried, worked into tools and blanks, and exported this stone to the wider Mississippian world. The chert found here was one of the major exported raw materials of the Mississippian culture and its distribution and procurement was one of the largest mining and production efforts organized during the Mississippian period. The raw material was dug up in the quarries and then transported to small hamlets for production in hoes, spades and blanks. Archaeologists believe they were then transported to and traded at regional mound centers such as the Hale Site, a palisade
Palisade
A palisade is a steel or wooden fence or wall of variable height, usually used as a defensive structure.- Typical construction :Typical construction consisted of small or mid sized tree trunks aligned vertically, with no spacing in between. The trunks were sharpened or pointed at the top, and were...
d village with a platform mound
Platform mound
A platform mound is any earthwork or mound intended to support a structure or activity.-Eastern North America:The indigenous peoples of North America built substructure mounds for well over a thousand years starting in the Archaic period and continuing through the Woodland period...
and a burial mound. From these local sites they were then transported and traded at sites even further afield. These materials were some of the most widely exchanged items during this period, with especially large amounts transported to the American Bottom
American Bottom
The American Bottom is the flood plain of the Mississippi River in the Metro-East region of Southern Illinois, extending from Alton, Illinois, to the Kaskaskia River. It is also sometimes called "American Bottoms". The area is about , mostly protected from flooding by a levee and drainage canal...
region. Examples are numerous at Cahokia
Cahokia
Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site is the area of an ancient indigenous city located in the American Bottom floodplain, between East Saint Louis and Collinsville in south-western Illinois, across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri. The site included 120 human-built earthwork mounds...
, where it was especially prized for hoes and spades, but finds have been made in locations as distant as Spiro
Spiro Mounds
Spiro Mounds is an important pre-Columbian Caddoan Mississippian culture archaeological site located in present-day eastern Oklahoma in the United States. The site is located seven miles north of Spiro, and is the only prehistoric Native American archaeological site in Oklahoma open to the public...
and Moundville
Moundville Archaeological Site
Moundville Archaeological Site, also known as the Moundville Archaeological Park, is a Mississippian site on the Black Warrior River in Hale County, near the town of Tuscaloosa, Alabama...
.
Types of use
The most common tools made from Mill Creek chert were digging implements. The physical properties of the stone, its ability to absorb repeated use without breaking as often as other stone, made it especially suitable for these types of tools. The Mississippian cultures heavy dependence on maizeMaize
Maize known in many English-speaking countries as corn or mielie/mealie, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The leafy stalk produces ears which contain seeds called kernels. Though technically a grain, maize kernels are used in cooking as a vegetable...
agriculture and their monumental architecture (platform mound
Platform mound
A platform mound is any earthwork or mound intended to support a structure or activity.-Eastern North America:The indigenous peoples of North America built substructure mounds for well over a thousand years starting in the Archaic period and continuing through the Woodland period...
s, moat
Moat
A moat is a deep, broad ditch, either dry or filled with water, that surrounds a castle, other building or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. In some places moats evolved into more extensive water defences, including natural or artificial lakes, dams and sluices...
s and embankments) made such tools especially valuable. Three main varieties of Mississippian culture hoes have been found, differentiated by their shape, oval, flared and notched. The oval and flared varieties were hafted to L-shaped wooden handles, such as the one wielded by the Birger figurine. The notched version was probably hafted as a spade. Another advantageous property of the Mill Creek chert was the large size of the nodules, which meant that the corresponding tools could be large. Some hoes were up to 60 centimetres (23.6 in) in length.
The other main use for the chert was large ceremonial bifaces, spatulate celts
Celt (tool)
Celt is an archaeological term used to describe long thin prehistoric stone or bronze adzes, other axe-like tools, and hoes.-Etymology:The term "celt" came about from what was very probably a copyist's error in many medieval manuscript copies of Job 19:24 in the Latin Vulgate Bible, which became...
and stone maces. These were ritual objects which often display a high degree of craftmanship. Unlike the hoes and other utilitarian tools, the ritual objects were often ground and polished to a high degree of finish. Many Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex is the name given to the regional stylistic similarity of artifacts, iconography, ceremonies, and mythology of the Mississippian culture that coincided with their adoption of maize agriculture and chiefdom-level complex social organization from...
artworks depict figures wielding these ceremonial items, especially the sword shaped ceremonial bifaces and maces. As with the hoes, these artifacts could also be quite large, with some of the swordlike bifaces being up to 50 centimetres (19.7 in) in length. These ritual objects have been found throughout the American Bottom
American Bottom
The American Bottom is the flood plain of the Mississippi River in the Metro-East region of Southern Illinois, extending from Alton, Illinois, to the Kaskaskia River. It is also sometimes called "American Bottoms". The area is about , mostly protected from flooding by a levee and drainage canal...
, the Lilbourn Site in New Madrid County, Missouri
New Madrid County, Missouri
New Madrid County is a county located in the Bootheel of southeast Missouri in the United States. As of the 2000 Census, the county's population was 19,760. A 2008 estimate, however, showed the population to be 17,589. The largest city and county seat is New Madrid...
and as far away as Spiro
Spiro Mounds
Spiro Mounds is an important pre-Columbian Caddoan Mississippian culture archaeological site located in present-day eastern Oklahoma in the United States. The site is located seven miles north of Spiro, and is the only prehistoric Native American archaeological site in Oklahoma open to the public...
and Gahagan Mounds
Gahagan Mounds Site
The Gahagan Mounds Site is an Early Caddoan Mississippian culture archaeological site in Red River Parish, Louisiana. It is located in the Red River Valley...
, Caddoan Mississippian culture
Caddoan Mississippian culture
The Caddoan Mississippian culture was a prehistoric Native American culture considered by archaeologists as a variant of the Mississippian culture. The Caddoan Mississippians covered a large territory, including what is now Eastern Oklahoma, Western Arkansas, Northeast Texas, and Northwest Louisiana...
sites in Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
and Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
. Although the objects are modelled after actual weapons, such as war clubs, archaeologists believe they were too delicate to function as actual weapons and instead functioned as status symbols.
See also
- Visual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas
- List of Mississippian sites
