The Kane Village Site: A Terminal Late Woodland Habitation in Madison County, Illinois

The Kane Village site (11MS52) has played an important role in the advancement of American Bottom archaeology, particularly regarding notions about the timing and character of pre-Mississippian developments. This site was a Terminal Late Woodland (Emergent Mississippian) habitation area that was periodically investigated by archaeologists from the early 1960s to 1999. While Kane Village was briefly visited by Archaic, Early Woodland, and Middle Woodland groups, who left behind a few stone tools, no evidence of Late Woodland occupations prior to the Loyd and Merrell phases were documented. Moreover, no evidence of later TLW or Mississippian occupations were uncovered. This bluff-top ridge was intensively occupied only during the Loyd and Merrell phases. Thus, the ceramic, lithic, and subsistence data presented here represent a clear picture of everyday village life during these phases. The main body of this report focuses on the 1999 ISAS borrow pit excavations while the appendices add the 1963 ISM highway salvage excavations for comparison discussion. Combined, the new data clarifies the cultural components at the site.