Spring Creek Site

The Spring Creek Site (20MU3) is a significant archaeological site in the U.S. state of Michigan. Located in Muskegon County in the western portion of the Lower Peninsula, it is the type site for a certain type of Late Woodland period pottery produced by the Ottawa tribe. The Michigan Archaeology Society excavated the Spring Creek Site in 1955 and 1956. Their results gained significant attention because of the large amounts of pottery recovered from the site. The excavation covered approximately 3,000 square feet (280 m2) of land, finding sherds of 966 different pottery vessels. This contrasts significantly with the number of stone tools at the village: lithic cores, bifaces, scrapers, lithic flakes, and other types of stone tools together only amounted to 344 objects. Such a large ratio of pottery to stone tools has been taken to suggest that the village was the year-round home of many women instead of being a seasonal hunting camp that only men would occupy. The uniformity of pottery at the site has enabled archaeologists to use it as a basis for radiocarbon dating of similar pottery from other sites in the region. Inhabited during the tenth century AD, Spring Creek appears to have been typical of Woodland period villages in the Great Lakes region: like many others in the region, it was the home of people who both farmed extensively and engaged in hunting. The number o

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