Morton mound 14 and mortuary ceremonialism in the Central Illinois River Valley

Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, Spring 2003 by Strezewski, Michael

ABSTRACT

Morton Mound 14, a Larson phase (A.D. 1250-1300) Mississippian mortuary site in the central Illinois River valley, was completely excavated in 1930, with approximately 100 Mississippian burials recovered. Although the excavation techniques utilized were innovative for the time, the published site report lacks information on primary data, limiting its usefulness in current research. Reexamination of these data has revealed the presence of charnel features consisting of a pair of stone-lined pits and a layer of ash. These features are associated with secondary remains, suggesting a role in corpse processing. It is argued, based on archaeological and ethnohistoric data, that the layout of the mound, burials, and charnel features is patterned after Native American notions of the cosmos. This layout may have acted as a means to establish links to a sacred order, to legitimize tribal organization and sustain links to the ancestors.

In 1930 the University of Chicago Department of Anthropology began the first of four field seasons in the central Illinois River valley, investigating the archaeology of Fulton County, Illinois. These excavations, under the direction of Fay-Cooper Cole, had dual goals: to clarify the then obscure culture history of the Midwest and to train graduate students in new archaeological field methods. It was in this context that many well-known figures in archaeology, such as James B. Griffin, Jesse Jennings, and Robert Braidwood, saw some of their first field training (Harn 1992). In the subsequent report of the excavations, Rediscovering Illinois (Cole and Deuel 1937), a preliminary description and outline of the regional culture history was developed, a framework still adhered to (in somewhat altered form) up to the present day.

The University of Chicago's excavations began at Morton Mounds (Figure 1 ), a multicomponent mortuary and habitation site extending along a 1.5-km section of the western bluffs of the Illinois River. The site lies 6.4 km northwest of the confluence with the Spoon River and about 2.25 km west of the current Illinois River channel. Investigations occurred over two field seasons (1930-31), with a total of seven mounds either partially or completely excavated. This article focuses on Morton Mound 14 (F[degrees]14), which was completely excavated in 1930 and contained the remains of at least 100 Mississippian interments, along with an additional 24 Woodland and nine Red Ocher burials. F[degrees]14 was the only mound at the Morton site that was found to have a substantial Mississippian mortuary component.

Unfortunately for those interested in the excavations, the published description of F[degrees]14 in Rediscovering Illinois (1937:75-94) runs a scant 19 pages, with the main focus on the development of trait lists for the various cultures in the Fulton County area. There is little presentation of the raw data and only short descriptions of some of the burials-mostly those that were thought to be more interesting or provided some information on the superpositioning of the various burial types. Information on specific individuals, their grave goods, and their positions in the mound is generally lacking. Another major problem with the F[degrees]14 report concerns the plan view map of the mound (Cole and Deuel 1937:Figure 20), which corresponds little to the actual locations and orientations of the individual burials, when compared to the field notes. This misleading plan view map has subsequently led to a certain degree of misunderstanding regarding the nature of the Mississippian burial component. Overall, the abbreviated nature of the excavation report has severely limited the research potential of F[masculine ordinal]14 in present-day mortuary analyses.

Aside from nearby Dickson Mounds (Conrad 1972; Harn 1980), F[masculine ordinal]14 is the only systematically excavated Larson phase (ca. A.D. 1250-1300) mortuary site of any considerable size (Esarey and Conrad 1998:53). Unlike Dickson, however, F[masculine ordinal]14 was most likely used for only a short period and so provides a clearer "snapshot" of mortuary practices at a specific point in time. In addition, since detailed data on completely excavated Mississippian cemeteries are limited, reexamination of Morton F[masculine ordinal]14 has much to add to the understanding of Mississippian mortuary practices, not only in the central Illinois River valley but also elsewhere in the region.

Nearly all of the skeletal material is currently curated at Indiana University, Bloomington, and the notes, cultural material, and photographs are a part of the Illinois State Museum collections, in Springfield and Lewistown, Illinois. After examining this material, it became apparent that much more information had been recorded in the field than had been included in the final report-information that makes much clearer the nature of the Mississippian burial episode at F[masculine ordinal]14. Based on these primary records, the first part of this article provides a description of the mound and the history of its construction. The second part focuses on the Mississippian charnel facilities and addresses their possible purposes and symbolic associations.