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Glenwood pottery.
Location of Glenwood sites in southwest Iowa. The Glenwood people built widely dispersed, Glenwood people may have survived, without
Loess Hills study confirmed at least 298 lodges at 275 unfortified homesteads located immediately competition from other groups, in a region with little
sites in a three-county area. south of the Mill Creek culture area, and large game and a low human population for nearly
they largely, if not entirely, postdate the Mill two centuries. They too then disappeared or were
Creek occupation. Glenwood communities perhaps absorbed by developing Oneota societies.
appear to have had a very broad diet, har-
vesting some large game but also apparently Mill Creek villages were likely organized along
foraging for anything edible. Artifacts in social and kinship lines different from those of the
these sites suggest a relationship with later Mississip- scattered Glenwood homesteads. And, each society
pian and Oneota groups. had access to and utilized resources in distinct ways.
On the face of it, however, their everyday tools seem
Mill Creek lasted for 100 to 200 years as a partici- remarkably similar.
pant in the Mississippian trade emanating through
Cahokia. By the time Cahokia waned, diminished
bison herds coupled with competition from neigh-
boring groups, likely created a decline in large game.
With timber resources exhausted, this may explain
the disappearance of the Mill Creek culture, leaving
an open and depleted landscape whose fringes were
utilized by Glenwood foragers.
Artist’s reconstruction of two 7
Glenwood lodges.
University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist
