BEARDSTON, ILLINOIS—Archaeologists are excavating at the Lawrenz Gun Club site, one of the largest known fortified Mississippian Period villages in the Illinois River Valley, reports the Journal Courier. The site's defensive palisade was built around A.D. 1150, but a team led by Indiana University archaeologist Jeremy Wilson has unearthed another structure dating to A.D. 1100, which was part of an earlier and smaller settlement of some 100 people. The later fortified village could have housed up to 600 people and covered some 50 acres. The team has also unearthed a number of pot sherds as well as stone tools. “What we’re seeing here is ceramics that are either traded up or crafted in a very similar fashion to what was being made down near modern day St. Louis at that time," said Wilson. "The stone is also non-local. They’re getting a lot of this material from other parts of the lower Midwest.” To read about another site dating to the same period, go to “Mississippian Burning.”