Cache in the Cornfield

When he was told that the little cornfield on the banks of the Illinois River was strewn with old Indian arrowheads and pottery shards, Northwestern University Archaeologist Stuart Struever decided to do a little spadework, hoping to unearth an ancient Indian settlement. What he found exceeded his wildest expectations. The plot, owned by a farmer named Theodore Koster, may well hold some of the most important archaeological remains ever discovered in North America.

Excavating steadily for the past five summers in Koster's cornfield, which is 45 miles north of St. Louis, Struever's team has dug up the remnants of at least 15 separate prehistoric settlements. Stacked atop each other in easily distinguishable layers--or horizons, as archaeologists call them--the individual settlements were in remarkably good condition. They had been so well preserved by covers of protective dust, which blew down from nearby bluffs after they were abandoned, that they can be "read" by archaeologists like pages of a history book. The oldest layer dates back some 8,000 years, proving that the site of Koster's cornfield--and probably other parts of the fertile Illinois River valley as well--were inhabited long before the Egyptians built the Pyramids or the ancient Britons erected their monument at Stonehenge.

The number of diggers at the rich archaeological lode, most of them volunteers, has grown steadily. They have already removed some 100,000 cu. ft. of earth, painstakingly examining all of it. Each fistful of dirt must be carefully sifted through screens, not only for fragments of Stone Age tools and weapons but also for bones, plant remains and other seemingly trivial objects. Fossilized snails, for example, can be studied for evidence of ancient climatic changes (different species survive in different temperature ranges). That, in turn, could explain why some of the settlements were abandoned. Seeds, on the other hand, can provide strong hints about what the ancient settlers ate.

Struever has already gathered so much useful material that he needs a computer to store, catalogue and analyze all his data. His findings, though still far from complete, have drastically changed the image of the prehistoric North Americans who lived in the area. Contrary to the accepted view, Struever says, these Stone Age people apparently led a rather idyllic life. Food was plentiful in the lush valley, allowing them to feast on nuts and wild grains, ducks, mollusks and fish. One cooking pit, for example, contained some 22,000 fish bones of all sizes, down to skeletons of 1-in.-long minnows; apparently they were all cooked together in a giant prehistoric bouillabaisse.

Peaceful Life. Unlike Stone Age hunters and gatherers elsewhere, the Illinois dwellers were not nomads; they lived in relatively permanent homes made of logs, twigs and grass. The diggers have found no evidence of warfare until a few hundred years before the establishment of agriculture in A.D. 800. It was during this period that the population began to grow noticeably, probably increasing the competition for the available food supply.

For Struever, this evidence has important implications. "Our work has shown that life for early man was not necessarily nasty, brutish and short," he says. "Judging from all the clues we have found, man led the good life in the Illinois River valley. He had plenty of leisure time in which to domesticate pets. It's sheer folklore that primitive people had to struggle from dawn to dusk simply to survive." In short, the early Americans of the Illinois River valley, like their modern counterparts, enjoyed a relatively peaceful life and a highly enviable standard of living.

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