Uncovering Huber Lifeways: An Overview of Findings from Four Years of Excavations at the Huber Phase Middle Grant Creek Site (11WI2739) in Northern Illinois

ABSTRACT

This article reports on recent findings from the ongoing archaeological project at the single- component early seventeenth-century Huber phase site, Middle Grant Creek (11WI2739), located at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in Will County, Illinois. Excavations and geophysical surveys conducted over the past four years are yielding valuable data that are expanding our understandings of this critical period just prior to European colonialism. Findings have revealed a wide range of protohistoric activities, including foodways, skilled craft production, and ceremonial activities as well as far-flung trade relationships that illustrate the endurance of Indigenous trade networks into at least the early seventeenth-century. This article introduces the latest findings from Middle Grant Creek and brings them into discussions of this key period in Midwestern archaeology.