Among many other claims to fame, the Koster site in Greene County, Illinois, is often said to have produced some of the earliest evidence for "substantial" (i.e., not temporary) domestic residential architecture in the Eastern Woodlands.  The Koster site excavations were a massive undertaking, revealing thousands of years of complicated stratigraphy.  While information from different aspects of the Koster excavations has appeared in dissertations, theses, monographs, papers, and books, a comprehensive report of the investigations has never been produced.  Data on the residential architecture from Koster are, unfortunately, scattered and sometimes in conflict.

Brown and Vierra (1983:184) state that Horizon 8C, dating to around 7000 RCYBP, contained

"house platforms partially dug into the slope of occupational surface . . . Well-preserved examples measure about 4.5 x 5.0 m.  Rectangular structures are indicated by the deep post pits for the heavy wall supports.  These structures are not lightly built shelters but represent a substantial investment in permanent shelter." 

The figure to the right shows what Brown and Vierra (1983:184) identify as a "well-preserved structure" defined by seven postholes (all of which appear to be within pit features?) and apparently extending into an unexcavated area.  The dashed lines indicate the limits of the "platform" that was apparently created in the slope to better accommodate the structure.

The claim for substantial houses at Koster was also made by Stuart Struever and Felicia Antonelli Holton in their popular book Koster: Americans in Search of Their Prehistoric Past (1979, Anchor Press): 

"Each structure as about twenty or twenty-five feet long, by about twelve or fifteen feet wide. . . .  To form the framework of a house, the Horizon 8 people dug foundations about two feet deep with sloping walls, and then set large posts in these.  The posts were wedged with chunks of limestone to stabilize them. Posts were set about eight to ten feet apart, and there is no evidence for smaller posts having been set between these.  The Horizon 8 people also cut terraces into the slope to set their house floors on level ground" (Stuever and Holton 1979:172).

The confidence with which Brown and Vierra (1983) and Struever and Holton (1979) assert the presence, shape, and dimensions of substantial structures contrasts somewhat with interpretations in two dissertations written about the excavations.  David Carlson (1979:352) wrote:

"Horizon 8C is also interesting because of the presence of man-made terraces cut into the natural slope of the site.  Whether these represent house floors or merely areas leveled for repeated use is not clear.  The lack of more than a few post molds suggests the latter.  The size of these terraces is often substantial.  The exposed portion of the westernmost one is some 30 x 18 feet and contains at least four fire hearths or pits (Figure 51).  The number of features in 8C is also substantially larger than any other component."

Carlson's (1979:Figure 52) map of the Horizon 8C excavations is shown to the right.  His map shows several terraced areas and a scattering of posts/features.  The "well-preserved" house shown by Brown and Vierra in the figure above is located along the southern boundary of the excavation area.

Renata Wolynec also considered the architectural remains at Koster in her dissertation (1977).  She discussed structures in both Horizon 8C and lower Horizon 6:

"Each shelter area consisted of a platform apparently intentionally cut into the slope of the land which extended onto the adjoining terrace.  The depth of these cuts ranged from 4 to 15 inches. The size of each shelter appeared to be similar, although exact determinations of area and dimensions are impossible because of the inability to determine exactly the boundaries of each structure.  Their shape appeared to be rectangular, although again, boundaries were indeterminable" (Wolynec 1977:274-275).

Wolynec described the single definable structure from lower Horizon 6 and provided a map (shown to right).  The structure (Feature 927) is the rectangular area in Area 16 that extends into the southern excavation boundary.  It is described (Wolynec 1977:304) as a "possible shelter platform (given the variety of scattered remains within the platform, areas of burning represented in groups D-H may be fires used for light, heat, food preparation, or stone tool manufacture . . .)".

I think it is pretty clear that the Middle and Late Archaic deposits at Koster contain evidence for some form(s) of domestic architecture.  I'm not sure what to think, however, about the size and construction of "houses" there.  I wonder if there are other sites with examples of permanent houses that were similarly constructed (i.e., with a relatively small number of relatively large posts)? Are there other sites where terraces were constructed to serve as house platforms? In their review of Archaic period archaeology in the Lower Illinois Basin in the Archaic Societies volume, Michael Wiant and colleagues acknowledge the existence of "some debate about the interpretation of these features" (Wiant et al. 2009:252).  I hope somebody out there is up for the challenge of addressing these issues by taking a thorough, systematic look at the early domestic architecture at Koster sooner rather than later.  It would be a really useful thing to do.

A 2010 report by Craig Keener, Kevin Nye, and Joshua Niedermeir (available here) describes excavations at the Yellowbush Creek site (33Ms29), a Late Archaic site in Meigs County, Ohio, dating to the second millennium BC.  Geophysical data collected during Phase II suggested "possible post formations indicative of structures," specifically "circular or arc shaped anomaly patterns" (Keener et al. 2010:5, 15).  Phase II excavations identified a cluster of posts and pit features that suggested the presence of some kind of structure (Keener et al. 2010:15). Phase III investigations exposed an arc of pits around an open area that was suggestive of a structure location (illustration to right, from Keener et al. 2010:16).

I will add a general entry to the database for the Yellowbush Creek site (Structure 2259).  Hopefully discrete structures can be identified there if work is conducted in the future.  The work described by Keener et al. (2010) was carried out by PAST.  I thank Craig Keener for pointing out the publication on the Ohio Archaeological Council webpage.

James Wright's (1972) manuscript on the Shield Archaic contains a brief description and illustrations of a semi-subterranean structure from the Aberdeen site (AL-7).  The figure to the right is taken from Wright (1972:54).  The structure measured about 4.3 m by 3.1 m and had "an entrance way 6 ft in length, a central pit, a hearth, several surviving tent-weighting stones, what is interpreted as a sleeping platform, and a definite concentration of artifacts and debris within the eastern confines of the house" (Wright 1972:55).  A radiocarbon determination (S-506) dates the structure to about 1075 BC.

I thank Chris Ellis for looking at my "Most Wanted" list and taking the time to scan and send me the portion of Wright's paper that described the structure from Aberdeen.  A second structure was documented at Aberdeen, and is presumably described in Wright's separate report of the Aberdeen excavations (which I will now add to my list of things to track down).

I don't yet have a map showing the location of the site. I believe (please correct me if I'm wrong - I will confirm/clarify details of the site's location when I get a copy of the full report) the Aberdeen site is located in what is now the Kivalliq Region of Nunavut, on the Thelon River, presumably near Aberdeen Lake.  At the time of Wright's work at Aberdeen, the region was known as the Keewatin District.  Although this is pretty far afield from the Eastern Woodlands, I think it is useful to include information on sites like these for comparative purposes. I'm not currently maintaining a map of Nunavut (or Manitoba), but I might add one depending on how the database grows. 

House Structure 1 from Aberdeen will be Structure 2256 in the database.

A 1975 paper by James Morton and Jeff Carskadden in Ohio Archaeologist describes the remains of one or more post structures from a site in Muskingum County, Ohio (Morton and Carskadden 1975).  The outlines of the structure(s) represented by the posts are not particularly clear.  The authors suggest that some of the posts may belong to a circular or semi-circular structure with two central posts (see illustrations below from Carskadden and Morton 1975).  The posts could also mark the location of a large, open structure or several smaller arc-shaped structures.

Neither a name or a number is given for the site in the original paper.  I found the site number 33-Mu-29 associated with the radiocarbon date (I-7604) discussed in the paper in the Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia Radiocarbon Database maintained by Cultural Resource Analysts.