A Late Archaic site on O’Bryan Ridge near the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers

Excavations at the Late Archaic Dirk site (23MI605) in southeast Missouri resulted in the recovery of baked clay objects, lithic artifacts, and plant remains from 39 features that date within the time range of circa 3800–3300 cal BP. A reanalysis of lithic artifacts indicates the presence of seven different nonlocal chipped-stone raw materials with sources to the north, west, and east in both Missouri and Illinois. The plant remains indicate exploitation of a wide array of habitats for wood used for heating and cooking needs. The plant remains also include substantial numbers of chenopod seeds, perhaps from cultivated semidomesticated or domesticated plants. Other important food plants apparently consisted of pecan, persimmon, and wild bean, followed by amaranth, squash, hickory nuts, walnuts, acorns, sumac, and perhaps maygrass, panicgrass, hog-peanut, and pickerelweed. The diverse archaeobotanical assemblage compares more favorably to Late Archaic subsistence patterns to the north and east rather than those to the south at sites such as Poverty Point and Jaketown. Nevertheless, the authors contend that greater recovery and systematic processing of flotation samples be undertaken in the future for sites scattered throughout the lower Mississippi Valley (LMV) to obtain a better record of Late Archaic plant food exploitation strategies.