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  • ISAS staff follow precautions while conducting essential fieldwork

    Apr 20, 2020 9:45 am by Tricia Barker
    Patrick Durst's head and chest are visible as he stands in an excavation, with Steven Boles standing six feet behind him

    Archaeologists Patrick Durst, lower center, and Steven Boles, upper right, maintain appropriate distance and take other precautions while continuing essential infrastructure work at a site in southwestern Illinois. Photo by Patrick Durst.

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    While most of the Illinois State Archaeological Survey’s staff are working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Northern, Western, Central, and American Bottom field stations are carrying out essential fieldwork related to Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) infrastructure projects. 

    ISAS staff in the field follow social distancing protocols, meaning they arrive and leave the site independently, remain at least 6 feet from one another as they work, and disinfect any tools or supplies used by more than one person. Any artifacts recovered are also isolated for two weeks before they are washed, analyzed, or otherwise handled.  

    Staff from the American Bottom Field Station (ABFS) in Collinsville, Illinois, are excavating an 1830s-1860s farmstead in southwestern Illinois. This work is being done in accordance with federal law in advance of IDOT’s construction of an extension for Illinois 158. This site is a particularly intact example of a pre-Civil War German-American farmstead. A map of the site (below) shows the symmetry of the farmstead’s layout. 

    Plan map of archaeological features of the German-American farmstead currently being excavated by staff from the American Bottoms Field Station. Feature 30 is the main cellar of a rectangular house that would have sat above it, with the extension on the east side being the cellar entrance. Feature 20 is a secondary cellar, possibly dug beneath an adjacent outbuilding. The two circular features in the front yard, to the south, were wells from which the farmstead’s occupants obtained their drinking water. The small numbered dots all around the rectangular perimeter of the site are the remains of a fence that closed in the yard. A driveway for horse-drawn wagons would have extended from the yard and fence due south for several hundred meters, connecting the farmstead to the original 1830s-1860s public road (today’s Illinois Route 177), linking the family to the German-American communities of Mascoutah to the east and Belleville to the west. Cartography by John Klein, GIS archaeologist at ABFS. 

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    1830s-1860s bottle found at the farmstead site. Photo by Patrick Durst, senior research archaeologist and statewide survey coordinator at ABFS. 

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    Pit filled with refuse at the farmstead site. Photo by Patrick Durst.

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    Mera Hertel and Steven Boles at the farmstead site. Rainy weather has caused some flooding at the site. Photo by Patrick Durst.

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