Artifact: Anything made or modified by people. Tools, weapons,
houses, roads,
garbage pits, and pencil shavings are all artifacts.
Atlatl: A shaft 1 to 2 feet long with a hook on one end and a
handle on the other used
to throw light weight spears or darts. Probably used from Paleo-Indian
period
to the introduction of the bow around A.D. 700.
Axes: A wood working tool with the blade mounted in line with
the handle. Usually
used to refer to grooved axes of ground stone, typical of the Middle
and Late
Archaic periods.
Bannerstone: Symmetrical, often polished stone artifacts with
a longitudinal hole.
Used as a weight or counter balance on atlatls during the Middle
Archaic period.
Base Camp: A camp occupied either seasonally or year-round which
served as a
center of residence for people exploiting a wide area around the site.
Celt: A tapered axe blade fitted into a socketed handle. Ground
stone celts were
used from the Middle Woodland to Mississippian periods.
Chert: Principal raw material used for chipped stone tools in
the Midwest, many
varieties. Also known as flint.
Chipped
Stone: Objects made by controlled flaking of raw materials like
chert.
Percussion flaking with a hammer stone or antler baton is used to rough
out tools. Pressure flaking with an antler, bone, or copper tip produces
a
refined appearance and fine edges.
Cord Marked: The rough impressions left on a pot's surface by
a cord wrapped
paddle during vessel construction.
Feature: An immovable artifact like a house floor, hearth, or garbage pit.
Gorget: A flat artifact of polished stone usually with two or
more drilled holes.
Probably used as atlatl weights in the Late Archaic period and possibly
until
Late Woodland times.
Hoe: A cultivating tool with a blade mounted onto a long handle.
A variety of
materials were used to make blades for hoes: chipped stone in the Middle
Woodland and Mississippian periods, shell in the Late Woodland, and
bison
scapulae among the Historic Illini.
Knife: Any of a variety of chipped stone cutting tools. Many were hafted.
Mano: A hand held stone used to grind nuts, seeds, or grain against a metate.
Metate: A large flat stone used in conjunction with a mano.
Plummet: Tear-dropped shaped weight of ground stone with a drilled
hole or
shallow groove at the small end. Used as weights on casting nets for
waterfowl and fish collecting in Middle and Late Archaic times.
Postmold: A stain left in the ground where a post has rotted away.
Pressure
Flaking: A method of pressing small, controlled flakes off the
edge of a chipped
stone tool using an antler, bone, or copper tip.
Projectile
Points: A tip used on spears, darts, or arrows. Often used secondarily
as knives.
Projectile point styles vary through time and can often be identified
to a
specific phase.
Scraper: A chipped stone tool with a steeply retouched working
edge used for
preparing hides an woodworking. End scrapers have the working edge
on
the end, side scrapers on one or both lateral edges. Points and knives
were often modified into hafted scrapers in Early and Middle Archaic
times.
Temper: Granular material mixed into wet clay for the production
of ceramics.
Temper helps prevent cracking when pots are being dried or fired. Crushed
igneous rock, sand, crushed limestone, chert fragments, and burned
and
pulverized mussed shell were all used a temper at various time.