Wednesday April 9th, 2014
Post date: Oct 4, 2014 8:32:26 PM
We had Christopher Watts join us on April 9th for a presentation about the Late Woodland Earthworks in the Lower Great Lakes. He spoke about Earthworks that were from the 14th to the 16th centuries AD and how they were often associated with burials.
There are sites located near the London area, Clearville, Southwold, Harrietville and Lawson, all Iroquoian Tradition. In the south west of Chatham, the Western Basin Tradition with distinct pottery designs, were located. These sites show evidence of a high degree of mobility and reliance on stored foods.
These Earthworks were circular and semi circular in shape and were found near water ways, made up of heavy clay soils and often located in swampy areas. These were non residential events, which is unlike the Neutral Iroquoians Earthworks found to the east.
Christopher spoke about the Cedar Creek Earthworks on the Essex Clay Plain, which are Late Woodland Earthworks. The Cedar Creek Earthworks are near two others, the Iler and Laramie Earthworks. The Cedar Creek Earthworks were a semi circular embankment on the shore in a clearing. They are seven meters on one side and lie fifteen meters from the embankment on the shore. It is not very pronounced, and may have fallen down from erosion into the ditch beside it. The ditch is one to one and a half meters in width. There is the ditch and then the embankment of the earthwork.
This is the archaeological site that some members of our chapter participated in digging last summer, and while not a lot of artifacts were uncovered a large number of fire cracked rocks were unearthed. One anvil stone for processing things like nuts was also found on the site.
It appears that the site was not always in use but was intermittently utilized by the native peoples. The layout of the site might have some association with earth, water and sky as the site floods easily or possibly some association with alignments to the solstices as the semi circle opens to the west (to observe the sunset?).
As with most sites it raises some interesting questions and has a few surprises in store for the archaeologists on site.
A special thanks to Christopher Watts for coming out to share what he has found and for allowing our members to participate in a dig on site.