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.     

Applied spatial modelling in the twenty-first century: the Wilson legacy. Looking back and looking forward

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we review the contributions of Alan Wilson to geography and regional science over a period of more than 50 years. Beginning from theoretical insights, mathematical models and spatial analytics methods for cities, the research becomes somewhat more applied in the 1980s. The notable impact of this work in a business and commercial setting is in marked contrast to a relative lack of traction in a public policy environment. Reasons for this are explored. In more recent times, the advent of big data has started to generate transformational approaches to geographical problems. We argue that years of accumulated experience from the study of more abstract problems within less well-instrumented systems was a precursor to this. Finally, we argue that through working with a ‘family’ of modellers, the skills available to meet these challenges is significantly more extensive than could have been the case in the absence of such a programme. It is a legacy which is at once inspiring, durable and hugely significant.