Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Archaeological Dig Site – The Gehring Site

While this stop will not take you to the actual dig site where the archaeology department holds its field school, this location will allow you to travel to SIUE's campus and view some of the artifacts on display. Located in the basement of Peck Hall, the display shows some of the findings from the Gehring Site alongside several other world cultures.

The Southern Illinois University Edwardsville campus is home to an archaeological site known as the Gehring site. Investigations at the Gehring site since the 1960s reveal the presence of nearly all archaeological time periods but is particularly rich in Middle Woodland/Hopewell culture (150 BCE - 250/300 CE).

The present Gehring site resides on 85 acres between Cahokia Creek and the base of a gradually sloping bluff with extremely fertile soil conducive to habitation. This location is a place people have continued to live over a long period of time as inhabitants had access to both the rich soil of the floodplain and the resources of the forest and upland prairie. Not surprisingly, research indicates that groups reused the site throughout the millennia.

Patrick Munson and Alan Harn first recognized the area as an archeological site in the late 1960s. Munson named the Gehring site after Wilbur Gehring, a former owner of the land who became a tenant farmer after the purchase of the land by SIUE in the 1960s. Further excavations by Sidney Denny in the 1970s followed the work of Munson and Harn.

Excavations of the Gehring Site on the SIUE campus have expanded the site from 40 to 85 acres. Excavations led by SIUE anthropologist Julie Zimmermann began in 2009. Gregory Vogel of the SIUE Anthropology Department directed the SIUE archaeology field school at the Gehring site in the summers of 2010, 2011, and 2012. Zimmermann has continued directing the field school to teach students standard archaeological field methods, but Susan Kooiman has been directing excavations since 2021. The field school provides a means for recording endangered archaeological sites that are rapidly disappearing due to development in Madison County.

Occupation and Culture

Evidence suggests that groups occupied the site throughout the Middle Woodland period. By 2015, excavations yielded over 30,000 artifacts. Artifacts have been absent only in areas where soils have been greatly disturbed due to agricultural practices or construction projects. Though much of what has been recovered is fragmentary, the types of materials recovered include lithic, ceramic, animal bones, and plant remains. Artifacts of particular interest include Hopewell ceramics, a drilled bear canine, a figurine, obsidian, mica, and copper. These artifacts indicate that Middle Woodland occupants of the Gehring site were active in the Hopewell Interaction Sphere, sharing culture and utilizing materials from further afield.

Hopewellian culture precedes Mississippian culture by about 1,000 years. The Gehring site is important because the Middle Woodland era in American prehistory is rarely studied due to a scarcity of sites; further obscuring the Middle Woodland people’s history, the later Cahokians and other Mississippian inhabitants built upon the land previously occupied by this group. It appears that Middle Woodland people were well adapted to their land and the seasons, utilizing native squash, sunflower, and wildlife. The Gehring site artifacts and plant and animal remains from about 2,000 years ago provide a better understanding of the prehistoric lives of the Indigenous people of the American Bottom in the St. Louis region.

There is an exhibit in SIUE’s Peck Hall concerning the excavation of the Gehring site. Artifacts recovered from the excavations are being analyzed in the Anthropology Research Lab where comparative materials are also held. Artifacts from the Gehring site will become part of the collections of the Illinois State Museum.

SIUE Land Acknowledgement

“Southern Illinois University Edwardsville exists in and serves a region that includes the lands of the Kiikaapoi (treaty in Edwardsville, 1819); The Illinois Confederacy, including the Peoria, Kaskaskia, Michigamea, Cahokia, and Tamaroa (treaty in Edwardsville, 1818); Dhegiha Siouan peoples; and others.” We affirm their contemporary and ancestral ties to the land and their contributions to this place. In alignment with the academic mission of the institution, we are committed to building responsible relationships with indigenous communities through the development of educational pathways and opportunities for indigenous students and the advancement of research and knowledge about indigenous peoples, cultures, and histories.” 

Written by Reed Richardson, Edited by Jessica Guldner

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