The stage and criterion for each were proposed in an earlier issue (No. 6) of this series, Man’s Venture In Culture, (Deuel 1950, pp. 5-12) as:

1. Natural Man (Protocultural), when “man” presumably employed sticks and stones as implements and weapons.

2. Self-Domestication, following the discovery of the principle of the conchoidal fracturing of flint and its control, and the invention of tool and weapon types.

3. Farming or Food-Raising, due to the discovery that grains (grasses) and food-draft animals could be bred and raised in captivity.

4. Inanimate Power Machine (Machine Age), after the discovery of the availability of water and wind as sources for energy and the adaptation of animal-driven machines to utilize them.

Man in the wild or Protocultural stage is thought not to have reached the Americas. The oxlike mammals were not domesticated in America for drawing ploughs and vehicles, turning grain mills or to serve as a continuous food supply source. Consequently, we are concerned in the following discussion only with peoples in the Self-Domestication stage and the Plant-Raising substage of Farming.

In ordinary language, the word “culture” is used in a diversity of senses. In these pages it is used in one of two ways, the one employed being readily understood from the context. In a general sense, culture means the significant beliefs, customary activities and social prohibitions that are peculiar to man (together with the man-made tools, weapons and other material objects that he finds or has found necessary) that modify, limit or enhance in some manner, most of his discernible natural activities due to and arising from his physical animal inheritance and organization. Culture in a specific sense refers to the significant cultural features of a group or period under consideration.

For convenience, any cultural activity according to its dominant purpose may be spoken of as belonging to one of three aspects of culture, (a) economic (technological and intellectual); (b) social (and political); and (c) spiritual (religious, artistic and recreational). To lesser degrees, most cultural activities have relationships with the two aspects other than the dominant.

Certain prevalent archaeological designations have been changed to remove time implications (e.g. “early” and “late” Woodland to Initial [beginning] and Final [end of an archaeological series]), or to shorten (e.g. “Tennessee-Cumberland” or “Gordon-Fewkes” to Cumberland).

Technical terms have generally been avoided; but where it has seemed necessary to retain them or to use words in a special sense, they are explained in the text or can be found in the glossary. The terms pattern and phase are those generally employed in the McKern system of classification, for the larger groupings into which it is customary to place the “cultures” as determined from the typology of the artifacts, their association in the assemblage and pertinent data recovered at a site (or local community) with due regard to circumstances of time and location of other sites nearby and over a larger area. The largest unit is the pattern which is made up of a number of phases. Cultural divisions smaller than these units are spoken of here as subcultures.

The approximate relationships of the archaeological units to the broader cultural stages and substages are given in Table I, page 4. The succession and coexistence of the archaeological units is indicated in the diagram “The Stream of Culture”, p. 57. The summary of “Characteristics of the Archaeological-Cultural Units” occurs on pages 70-76.

This is a story mainly of Illinois when occupied by American Indians but it would not give a reasonably true picture without showing the known extensions of some of the cultures into surrounding areas and the probable intrusions from outside the state.

Of necessity in attempting a summary of the archaeology of Illinois and adjacent areas, the writer has had to lean heavily on the field work and reports of the many anthropologists who have contributed so much to the present understanding of the American Indian in the United States. To this invaluable source material and to these able scientists the indebtedness of the writer is acknowledged to be very great indeed. In the compass of a work of this type it is impossible to name them or give them credit for original or similar views, nor is it practicable to include in the bibliography all the publications used.

Acknowledgment of assistance is made especially to Georg K. Neumann, Joseph R. Caldwell and Melvin L. Fowler, Milton D. Thompson, Ruth Kerr, Nora Deuel and Orvetta Robinson for reading and discussing the manuscript from various viewpoints, to Dr. James B. Griffin for helpful information on the dates of sites and of archaeological data, to Irvin Peithmann, Southern Illinois University, for photographs furnished, for information on sites he had discovered and the privilege of visiting them in his company, to George Langford for photographs and data regarding the Fisher site, to Charles Hodge for all photographs reproduced not otherwise credited, and to Jerry Connolly, Bettye Broyles, Barbara Parmalee and Jeanne McCarty for their excellent drawings. Without all this considerable and valuable aid the publication could not have been completed.