Archive
The ISAS Archive contains complimentary PDFs from multiple series that are out of print or designed specifically for online distribution.
Transportation Archaeological Bulletins
Technical Reports
Transportation Archaeological Bulletins
Vol. 2: More from the Illinois Frontier: Archaeological Studies of Nine Early-Nineteenth-Century Sites in Rural Illinois
Author: Robert Mazrim
2008, 170 pp., figures, tables, references
This is available only as a PDF. Click here to download.
This volume summarizes the results of archaeological excavations at nine frontier-context archaeological sites in rural Illinois. They were occupied for a short period during the American frontier period of Illinois, which closed around 1845. They are also united in that they represent all the short-term pre-1850 sites excavated by ITARP for road construction projects between 2002 and 2005. Each of the sites consists of a domestic component occupied between 1810 and 1845. Additionally, one of these sites (the Rockyford site) also includes a blacksmith shop from this period.
These sites, reported using consistent analytical terms and methods, provide an opportunity to revisit certain themes and the hypothesis presented in the Mazrim 2002 summary volume, “Now Quite Out of Society:” Archaeology and Frontier Illinois. Each chapter is divided into three parts: archival setting, results of excavations, and results of artifact analysis. These are designed to provide the reader with a thorough discussion of the features, artifacts, interpretations, and apparent patterning at each site. This information, the basis of short-form testing reports submitted to the Illinois Department of Transportation and the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, is presented here in a manner more suitable for publication. The final chapter of the volume serves as a summary and synthesis structured around frontier context research themes. Those themes, and the patterns derived during the 2002 study, are presented and tested using the new data from these additional sites.
Vol. 1: "Now Quite Out of Society": Archaeology and Frontier Illinois
Author: Robert Mazrim
2002, 297 pp., figures, tables, references
This is available only as a PDF. Click here to download.
This volume assembles a number of interrelated historical archaeology studies, originally written by Robert Mazrim for several separate research and contract archaeology projects between 1994 and 2000 but not previously published. Each of these reports focuses on early nineteenth-century frontier-context sites and settlements in Illinois. Chapters 1, 3, 4, and 5 represent reworked or expanded versions of studies conducted as part of an analysis of three early nineteenth-century sites in the greater American Bottom region. Chapter 2 looks at patterns of initial American settlement in central Illinois as reflected in land-office survey maps. Much of this information was gathered during the preparation of historical-context studies for archaeological surveys of major highway corridors in central Illinois. Chapter 6 is an in-depth study of artifact assemblages recovered from frontier sites in and near Illinois.
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Technical Reports
Vol. 9: The New Mississippian River Bridge Archaeological Project: Late Victorian and Early Modern Occupations 1880–1930
Authors: Patrick R. Durst, Robert W. Rohe, and Dwayne L. Scheid with contributions by Claire Dappert-Coonrod, Kristen N. Donahue, Patrick R. Durst, Joseph M. Galloy, Steven R. Kuehn, Curtis Mann, Robert Mazrim, Martha M. Mihich, Robert W. Rohe, Dwayne L. Scheid, and Laura Williams
2020, 798 pp., figures, tables, references, online downloadable appendices
This is available only as a PDF. Click here to download.
This volume documents the investigation of Euro-American historic-era deposits encountered during the New Mississippi River Bridge (NMRB) project. The investigations, conducted by teams of archaeologists from the Illinois State Archaeological Survey (ISAS), explored the information potential and historical significance of a largely late Victorian-era residential neighborhood within the project limits. Thehistoric-era material remains, dating from 1870 to 1930, are part of the “second city” that developed at East St. Louis. The “first city” was the “East St. Louis Precinct” of Greater Cahokia. This Native American city buried beneath the Euro-American citydates to the 10th through 12th centuries AD and has been documented in a series of published NMRB project reports funded by the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT)...
Utilizing both archival records and archaeological data, ISAS researchers do succeed in providing a glimpse of everyday life in the Goose Hill neighborhood, but their work also highlights the limitations of urban archaeology in the late Victorian era. The limitations stem from three transformative forces: (1) increasing mass-production of goods (consumerism), (2) proliferation of detailed recordkeeping, and (3) expansion of public sanitation, especially the removal of refuse from residential areas. These trends profoundly limit the information potential of the material record. Archival records in most cases can better answer research questions than can samples of mass-produced goods.
Archaeologists who focus on of the recent past might debate this conclusion. Yet the chapters in this volume well illustrate that as the information potential of the material record drops off significantly, the information potential of archival records increases just as significantly. In short, we may conclude that although mass-produced items can provide tangible links to past lives and events, they are part of a new world order (capitalism), one in which we live today, where producers and consumers are separated by time and space, and where families of different ethnic or economic backgrounds consume and discard many of the same goods, which are then deposited off-site in community landfills. This conclusion is indeed a genuine contribution to Midwestern historic-era archaeology, one that has far-reaching implications for the scholarly study of the recent past.
—Brad H. Koldehoff, IDOT Chief Archaeologist
Vol. 165: Drugstore Bottles for Archaeologists: Embossed Springfield Pharmacy Glassware from the Civil War to the Roaring Twenties
Author: Kenneth B. Farnsworth
2015, 84 pp., full-color figures, tables, references
This is available only as a PDF. Click here to download.
This archaeological overview of changing styles and use patterns of pharmacy glassware in the upper Midwest is a direct outgrowth of Fred Brown’s intensively researched history of Springfield Illinois drugstore businesses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see Studies in Material Culture #2, “Good for What Ailed You” in Springfield, Illinois: Embossed Pharmaceutical Bottles Used by Springfield Druggists from the Civil War Era to the Early Twentieth Century by Frederick M. Brown).
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