The Huber Site: A Frontier Indigenous Settlement at the Eve of European Contact

Abstract

Dating between 1450 CE and 1650 CE, Huber (11CK1) is the type site for the Upper Mississippian Huber phase identified in the western Great Lakes region. Occupied at a critical time in American Indian history, this late precontact village contains some of the earliest European trade goods found in Illinois. The site was briefly investigated in 1929 and again in 1957, but since then it was thought to have been virtually destroyed by looting and urban development. Recent field investigations by the Illinois State Archaeological Survey (ISAS), completed between 2017 and 2020, confirm that large portions of the site remain intact and preserved on public lands and adjacent residential yards. Discoveries include house basins, possible ridged field structures, well-preserved organics, ceramics, chipped- and ground-stone tools, and additional trade items. New analyses of cupreous materials recovered from 11CK1, as well as other Huber phase sites in the region, better identify relationships between sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Huber peoples and (1) earlier occupations in the area, such as Fisher, (2) potentially contemporaneous Indigenous communities, such as Langford or Oneota, and (3) European peoples and trade goods.