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Evidences of Early Woodland Culture at Chalk Bluff Rock Shelter344

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Extract

Chalk Bluff Rock Shelter is located on the southern end of Chalk Bluff in Section 2, Township 10 South, Range 3 West, nine miles southwest of Murphysboro, Jackson County, Illinois. The bluff in which the shelter is located is an unbroken sandstone escarpment nearly one mile long and having an almost uniform height of 250 feet. This escarpment, lying in a north-south direction and paralleling the Mississippi flood-plain, has a westerly exposure. Here, where the shelter is located, is a conspicuous overhanging cliff offering the shelter ideal protection from the elements. The shelter itself is about sixty feet long and about forty feet wide. This rock shelter is situated about thirty feet above the flood plain. At no time during our work was there any evidence found of stratification suggesting water deposit in the dirt fill. This would substantiate the idea that the shelter was above highwater at all times.

Type
Facts and Comments
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1939

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Footnotes

344

Knowing for some time the existence of this shelter, a group of interested persons went to the shelter on November 14, 1937, and spent several days excavating. The party consisted of Charles Thomas, Joe Thomas, and Warren Whelpley of Cobden, and Homer Benz, Raymond Benz, Troy Dorris, and the author of Carbondale, Illinois.

References

345 Peithman, Irvin, Bluff Shelters on Indian Creek, Jackson Co., Illinois, National Archaeological News, Vol. 1, No. 11, pp. 6–9, January, 1938.