Last weekend, Team Paleo members participated in a mounds survey- a tour with on-site lectures of five Middle and Late Woodland and Mississippian Periods burial and temple mounds near Lewiston, Illinois. Presented in turn by Dr. Wiant and Mr. Harn of Dickson Mounds Museum, the presentations took us through Havana, Illinois to Rockwell Mound, the Ogden-Fettie Mound at the south end of Dickson Mounds property, up the hill to the Larson site village. All this before lunch. After lunch, we focused on Dickson Mound and took another short drive to the Morton village site, the Norris Farms cemetery, ending with a beautiful bluff-top view of Thompson Lake at Emiquon.
If that seems like a lot to take in, it was. Yet the scads of information, while standing in the ancient sites helped to solidify the layers of learning Team Paleo has accumulated. I suppose one could say that we all learn by setting down strata of debris-like bits of knowledge until at some point, we discover we have sedimented an excellent foundation of understanding. That compressed understanding of a particular subject- both in information and in experience- becomes dense and strong, yet still permeable to further elucidation in the same way sedimentary layers of rock may still accumulate workable nodules of flint. I'll drag this metaphor on a little further (forgive me!) to remind how humans can coax tools from these rocks of knowledge, furthering their culture.
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| A view from the Norris Farms cemetery, north of Dickson Mounds Museum |
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| Mounds built upon a natural ridge- scallops along the blufftop that can be seen well from the Nature Conservancy's Emiquon walkway on Rt 78/97 |
