From the Wabash to the Mississippi: Long-Distance Mobility and the Mueller-Keck Complex, St. Clair County, Illinois

Situated in the uplands near Prairie du Pont Creek about 5km from the Mississippi River floodplain, the Mueller and Keck sites occupy adjacent landforms. Decades of cultivation and erosion have brought numerous early PaleoIndian lithic artifacts to the surface. Controlled excavations have, unfortunately, demonstrated that the artifacts are confined to the plowzone. Avocational and professional investigations have recovered nearly identical assemblages from both sites. No definite early PaleoIndian artifacts are made from local or regional lithic materials. All fluted points and preforms, for example, are made from lithic materials with sources areas in Indiana. The dominant raw material is Attica chert along with traces amounts of Holland, Lead Creek, and Allen’s Creek. The Mueller-Keck Complex appears to have been repeatedly reoccupied by groups that “geared-up” at the Attica source in the Wabash Valley and moved across Illinois to the Mississippi Valley.