The Archaeology of Carrier Mills: 10,000 Years in the Saline Valley of Illinois

Archaeological sites throughout southern Illinois provide a chronicle of change, of the varying ways people have lived in that area over the past 10,000 years. One of the richest and most environmentally diverse sites (low uplands, lakes, swamps, the Saline River, the Shawnee Hills) in southern Illinois is located approximately two miles south of Carrier Mills. This book focuses on the results of a five-year archaeological investigation at three sites located in a 143-acre area known as the Carrier Mills Archaeological District. This area, rich in archaeological treasures and keys to the prehistoric people of southern Illinois, is also coal mining territory. In cooperation with Peabody Coal Company, archaeologists in this study have sought to learn the ages of the various prehistoric occupations represented at the sites; to better understand the technology and social organization of these prehistoric people; to better understand the environment; to collect information about diet, health, and physical characteristics of the prehistoric inhabitants; and to investigate the remains of the 19th-century Lakeview settlement.