Woodland Adaptations to Upland Settings in Northeastern Illinois: New Data from the Kautz Site (11DU1)

The multiple shifts seen in subsistence, settlement, mortuary practices and political economy among regions across the Upper Mid-continental United States between the Middle to Late Woodland periods has puzzled archaeologists for decades. Until recently, the Hopewell Exchange System, centered in Ohio and west-central Illinois, appeared to have connected disparate groups across the eastern U.S. for nearly three centuries. As it faded from the archaeological record circa A.D. 300-400 it was replaced in different regions with populations who were less connected, but who shared broadly similar cultural patterns. The Kautz site (11DU1) represents an opportunity to explore the Middle and Late Woodland behavior in the remote uplands of northeastern Illinois away from major southern population centers. A recent analysis of these materials suggests that people at Kautz shared a similar material culture and world view with their neighbors, but retained many localized cultural patterns that can be seen in the archaeological record as far back as the Late Archaic, circa 1000 B.C. This paper will illuminate these differences and how the people at the Kautz site were practicing a lifeway specifically adapted to the upland moraines of northeastern Illinois.