IVAS Lecture: The Collins Site: A Late Woodland Village and Mound Site in Vermilion County, Illinois

IVAS Lecture: The Collins Site: A Late Woodland Village and Mound Site in Vermilion County, Illinois

• Location: ISM Dickson Mounds Museum, Lewistown
• Date: Wednesday, August 05, 2015, 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM

Douglas K Jackson, Special Projects Assistant Coordinator, Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program, at the University of Illinois, will present a talk titled “The Collins Site: A Late Woodland Village and Mound Site in Vermilion County, Illinois” at the Wednesday, August 5, 2015, meeting of the Illinois Valley Archaeological Society. The presentation begins at 7:00 p.m. at Dickson Mounds Museum. This lecture is free and the public is invited to attend the lecture and the refreshments following.

The Collins site is situated along the Middle Fork of the Vermilion River near Danville in east-central Illinois. Well known to local residents and collectors, archaeological excavations were first conducted at the site in the 1970s when the site was threatened by a proposed reservoir project. U of I archaeologists returned to the site in 2013 for additional work. Prehistoric occupations at the site span millennia but the primary site occupation and the focus of this talk will be on the Late Woodland component that dates to approximately A. D. 1000 – 1100. A large village and a series of mounds are associated with this component. Significantly and unusual for this part of Illinois, evidence of contact and influences from early Cahokia in southwestern Illinois have been documented, along with contacts with other Late Woodland groups in Illinois and Indiana. Unlike the central Illinois River valley, where Cahokia influences on the local Late Woodland group resulted in a complete transformation into a fully Mississippian society that lasted for several centuries, the influences to the group at Collins were apparently brief and limited as they chose not to fully adopt a Mississippian lifestyle. After the site was abandoned, there is little evidence of prehistoric occupation in east-central Illinois until Historically known groups such as the Kickapoo occupied the region.

The Illinois State Museum—Dickson Mounds is located between Lewistown and Havana off Illinois Routes 78 and 97. The museum is open free to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. every day. Tours and special programs are available for groups with reservations. For more information call 309.547.3721 or TTY 217.782.9175 or visit the museum's web site at www.ExperienceDicksonMounds.com. Also check out weekly updates on Facebook at “Illinois State Museum – Dickson Mounds”.