The Stoner Site is a substantial archaeological site in the far eastern portion of the U.S. state of Illinois. Discovered during the Great Depression, the site has produced large numbers of artifacts from a prehistoric village that was once located there, and archaeological investigations have shown it to be one of the area's most important archaeological sites for the Allison-Lamotte culture. After more than a decade of fruitful research and predictions of potentially rich results from future work, it has been designated a historic site.
Geology
Stoner lies in the middle of open fields several miles from the nearest community. Located near the Wabash River and about south of the village of Hutsonville, the site is situationed in rural eastern Crawford County. It lies in the floodplain of a small stream, Sugar Creek, which flows about below the site, approximately to the northeast; the soil is largely clay, but due to the presence of the stream, much of the immediate vicinity is typically marshland. The surrounding countryside is the heavily glaciated prairies typical of much of Illinois, although before settlement the region straddled the boundary between the open plains to the west and the woodlands to the east. A gravel road traverses the fields a short distance west of the site. Its location in a prairie near marshland is common for sites of the culture that inhabited the village.
Features
The predominant feature of the Stoner Site is a wide semicircular midden that is believed to have been the site of a prehistoric village. With a diameter of almost and a height of nearly , the midden contains numerous postholes, but its most prominent feature is found at its northeastern corner: a substantial mound measuring by and approximately high. Despite its prominent size, the mound has been greatly reduced since the middle of the 20th century; before that time, the site was covered by woods, but cultivation since that time has reduced the mound from its previous height of .
Excavations
The Illinois Archaeological Survey first recorded the Stoner Site in 1930 and carried out a minimal field survey at the site, collecting materials that could be found at the surface. Aside from occasional reckless digging into the mound in the early 1950s by the owners, no further work of any sort was done for nearly thirty years. Local resident Denzil Stephens, an amateur archaeologist, conducted far more detailed work at the site starting in the late 1950s: besides investigating the mound, he excavated the surrounding field and discovered the midden and village site. By digging test pits at regular intervals and removing everything down to the subsoil, he demonstrated the existence of a village: by the early 1960s, he had revealed more than three hundred postholes and thus shown the complete outline of one house and portions of outlines for eleven other buildings. Stephens returned to the site once more in the late 1960s to test an area away from his previous excavations; this excavation's nearly complete absence of discoveries helped to demonstrate the site's boundaries.
Due to the cursory work done by the IAS field survey in the early 1930s, few artifacts from Stoner were known until Stephens began working at the site. His early excavations revealed unfamiliar types of pottery and hitherto-unknown forms of projectile points. As he returned to the site in the 1960s, he began to uncover plentiful cultural materials, including many projectile points identified as the work of the Allison-Lamotte culture, numerous stone tools (e.g. scrapers and , plus more than three hundred lamellar flint knives), gorgets, and projectile points strongly resembling those found at the Merom site in the nearby town of Merom, Indiana. Clay artifacts are also known at the site; the owners found pieces of pipes while digging around the mound, Stephens' excavations yielded more pipe pieces and one substantial clay figurine, and more than five thousand potsherds of various types have been recovered. Excavations yielded virtually no evidence of shellfish consumption by the inhabitants, which contrasts strongly with comparable nearby sites, such as the Daugherty-Monroe Site northwest of Merom.