Glacial geology and Indian Artifacts

[ToddsPoint]

If you live in the glaciated Midwest, here’s a tip for finding artifacts. I took the pic below from my drone. Shelby Co IL, looking due south. The trees in the distance are around the village of Findlay. The terminal moraine of the Wisconsin glacier is 9 mi south of Findlay. Below the surface, there’s around 250’ of boulders, cobbles, gravel, sand, clay and sediment all jumbled together the glacier brought down from points north. As the ice receded 20,000 yrs ago, large blocks of ice were buried in the deposited till. These blocks of ice eventually melted and formed low spots in the landscape. These are called kettles. Much later, around 6,000 BC, this area became a tall grass prairie. Birds and animals moved in. Bison used the kettles extensively. They rolled in the mud in the kettles to protect themselves from insect bites. Each bison took a little mud with him and the kettles remained open. When early settlers arrived, they called the kettles “buffalo wallows”, not knowing they were formed by melting ice millennia ago. The kettles attracted game and the game attracted Indians. The trees to the far left in the pic are along the Kaskaskia River. That’s where they lived, but they came to the kettles to hunt. Finding kettles can be difficult. In spring with heavy rains you can sometimes spot areas of ponding in the fields. In this pic, the kettles look like bare spots. The field was planted but we had a wet spring and ponding killed the crops in the kettles. I’m not sure if they would show up on lidar. After the buffalo disappeared and farming started, the kettles have filled in quite a bit. I’m sure there are artifacts within the kettle but they are buried too deep and farming doesn’t bring them up. You can find artifacts all around the kettles though. They are definitely worth hunting.

 

[russau]

GREAT POST Gary !

 

[unclemac]

that pic makes me cry out in anguish... My mother was raised in Naperville, in the 20's when it was a small town surrounded by black soil rich, farms, (hers still exists)! Nearly all these farms are long since gone... but the absolute tragedy is that when they subdivided, the developers scrapped off the artifact rich black soil down to the clay.... built the houses and sold the topsoil back to the new homeowners.... Just imagine what was lost... all these old farms had a cigar box or two full of points and axe heads etc.

 

[ToddsPoint]

that pic makes me cry out in anguish... My mother was raised in Naperville, in the 20's when it was a small town surrounded by black soil rich, farms, (hers still exists)! Nearly all these farms are long since gone... but the absolute tragedy is that when they subdivided, the developers scrapped off the artifact rich black soil down to the clay.... built the houses and sold the topsoil back to the new homeowners.... Just imagine what was lost... all these old farms had a cigar box or two full of points and axe heads etc.

A friend of mine has an excavating business. When they built the Walmart they paid him to haul off the topsoil. He ended up with a mountain of rich black loess soil. Then he sold dump truck loads for $100. He made out like a bandit!

 

[dirstscratcher]

A friend of mine has an excavating business. When they built the Walmart they paid him to haul off the topsoil. He ended up with a mountain of rich black loess soil. Then he sold dump truck loads for $100. He made out like a bandit!

I used to live in Fairfield County, Ohio. The field behind my house was loaded with artifacts, mostly archaic. Then they converted it to a sod farm for a few years. When they put it back into farming the artifact density was greatly reduced.