David S. Brose

The archaeological site at Killarney Bay, on the northeast side of Georgian Bay in Ontario, Canada, has attracted and mystified archaeologists for decades. The quantities of copper artifacts, exotic cherts, and long-distance trade goods all highlight the importance of the site during its time of occupation. Yet researchers have struggled to date the site or assign it to a particular cultural tradition, since the artifacts and mortuary components do not precisely match those of other sites and assemblages in the Upper Great Lakes. The history of archaeological investigation at Killarney Bay stretches across parts of three centuries and involves field schools from universities in two countries (Laurentian University in Canada and the University of Michigan in the United States). This volume pulls together the results from all prior research at the site and represents the first comprehensive report ever published on the excavations and finds at Killarney Bay. Heavily illustrated.

Consisting of 18 earthen mounds and numerous additional habitation areas dating to A.D. 1250-1550, the Bottle Creek site was first professionally investigated in 1932 when David L. DeJarnette of the Alabama Museum of Natural History began work there to determine if the site had a cultural relationship with Moundville, connected to the north by a river system. Although partially mapped in the 1880s, Bottle Creek's location in the vast Mobile-Tensaw Delta of Baldwin County completely surrounded by swamp made it inaccessible and protected it from most of the plunder experienced by similar sites in the Southeast. This volume builds on earlier investigations to present extensive recent data from major excavations conducted from 1991 to 1994 and supported in part by an NEH grant. Ten anthropologists examine various aspects of the site, including mound architecture, prehistoric diet, pottery classification, vessel forms, textiles used to make pottery impressions, a microlithic stone tool industry, water travel, the persistence of mound use into historic times, and the position of Bottle Creek in the protohistoric world. The site is concluded to be the best remaining example of Pensacola culture, an archaeological variant of the widespread Mississippian tradition identified by a shell-tempered pottery complex and by its geographic association with the north-central coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Occupied for three centuries by a thriving native culture, Bottle Creek is an important remnant of North American peoples and as such is designated a National Historic Landmark. This published compilation of the research data should establish a base for future scholarly investigation and interpretation.

This work interprets some aspects of the prehistory of the basin of northern Lake Michigan based on the excavation and analysis of the Summer Island site. Brose describes the excavation and the geomorphology of the site, and reports on the site’s features and artifacts, including ceramics, lithics, copper, and bone. The site contained three components: Middle Woodland, Late Woodland, and protohistoric. Brose analyzed these components in terms of material culture, economic adaptation, and social organization.