Eight hundred years after its glory the Cahokians brought about, Illinois nurtured another group of faithful pilgrims, venturing from Nauvoo, Illinois to Utah: the Mormons. However, their pilgrimage was different from that of those who walked days and nights towards Cahokia from the Emerald Acropolis: they were forced to move by religious persecution. Their aim was to find a new homeland where they could establish churches and reside in peace. The pilgrimage lasted for as long as 23 years (Haury-Artz 2016), over the length of 1415 miles (National Park Service 2019), a trail now called the Mormon Pioneer Trail, commemorated by the state government and celebrated by the National Geographic as one of the top 10 historic pilgrimages across the world (National Geographic). It is also known as one of the greatest Euro-American immigration in history, crossing both the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains (Haury-Artz 2016).

The first wave of the journey started on February 4^th, 1846. Led by approximately 500 leaders, a population of 70,000 Mormons migrated from Nauvoo towards Salt Lake City, Utah (Mormon Historic Sites Foundation). The cold weather made the pilgrimage difficult, not to mention the geographical condition, and by the spring of 1847, already 400 lives had been taken by the harsh condition (University of Nebraska Lincoln). Throughout the whole journey, the Mormons travelled mostly by wagons, handcarts and by foot. Along the way, many camps were established as temporary settlements. For example, the Locust Creek Camp is one of their stopping points soon after the journey started in 1846, and also where “Come, Come Ye Saints” was written. The song is now the most well-known hymn of the Mormons and even an anthem to the pilgrims of that era, encouraging them to keep going with the support of faith. The handcart expedition took a slightly different track than the ones who travelled by wagons. This path included a number of camps as well, but above that, a few handcarts crafting sites were discovered – the Mormon Handcart Park, for instance, marked a settlement as well as a site where people built their handcarts for the travel. When the Mormons were to cross the Missouri River, they took ferries, the most used of all being the North Ferry, while the handcart travellers crossed the Des Moines River by not only ferry, but also floating bridges believed to be by Grand Avenue. Meanwhile, alternative routes were also taken when on-land conditions were too difficult, or when rivers were hard to cross (Haury-Artz 2016). The trails are illustrated as below:

Figure 1 – Mormon Trails Across Iowa (Haury-Artz 2016)

Archaeologists were evidently involved in the studies of this great pilgrimage: “Site records, historical documents, and map resources were examined” with previous studies. While aerial photographs of GIS technology was used to further determine the exact route of the travel, LiDAR images were also taken to clearly illustrate the trails the Mormons left behind. Moreover, land surveys and explorations took place to locate some distinctive and special campsites, such as cemeteries of the ones who did not survive the journey, inns and cabins built for better-sheltered settlements (Haury-Artz 2016).

Figure 2 – LiDAR image of the Mormon Trail (Haury-Artz 2016)

For further readings on the Mormon Trail:

1. https://utah.com/mormon/pioneer-trail-history
2. https://archive.org/details/historicresource00kimb/page/6

References:

Haury-Artz, Chérie

  2016  Exploring Mormon Trails Across Iowa. Electronic Document,

  https://archaeology.uiowa.edu/exploring-mormon-trails-across-iowa, accessed November

  24, 2019.

Mormon Historic Sites Foundation

  Mormon Iowa Trail. Electronic Document, http://mormonhistoricsites.org/mormon-iowa-trail/,

  accessed November 24, 2019.

National Geographic

  Top 10 Historic Pilgrimages. Electronic Document,

  https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/top-10/pilgrimages-sacred-journeys/#close,

  accessed November 24, 2019.

National Park Service

  2019  Mormon Pioneer: Maps. Electronic Document,

  https://www.nps.gov/mopi/planyourvisit/maps.htm, accessed November 24, 2019.

University of Nebraska Lincoln

  The Mormon Trail. Electronic Document,

  https://cdrhsites.unl.edu/diggingin/trailsummaries/di.sum.0006.html, accessed November

  24, 2019.

Images:

Haury-Artz, Chérie

  2016  Exploring Mormon Trails Across Iowa. Electronic Document,

  https://archaeology.uiowa.edu/exploring-mormon-trails-across-iowa, accessed November

  24, 2019.

Accessing whether an animal was domesticated or wild from its bones has been a persistent objective for archaeologists. There are three markers signifying the difference between domesticated pigs and wild boars, used as approaches to distinguish bones (teeth and the lower jaw in particular) found on sites and thereby to study the degree of agriculturalization of varies ancient civilizations.

First and foremost, since the Neolithic period, food for humans has eventually become more sophisticated. Due to agriculturalization, food preparation became a much more meticulous process: from threshing, raking, winnowing to cleaning, food particles were then much easier to take in (Renfew and Bahn 2018:193). Moreover, the domestication of plants has also made food more refined: with a settled living pattern, farmers cultivated a variety of plants, boosting the production while also ultimately altering their structures to adapt more properly to the then desired diet (Renfew and Bahn 2018:195). Given pigs often ate household scraps (Weber and Price 2015), their diet has also experienced such a change. Now that mastication was less vital than before, pigs’ jawbones eventually experienced a shrink from the lack of frequent, forceful use. However, although the bone structure narrowed during the taming process, the inherited teeth structural traits still remained. A result of this phenomenon would be less space for development (Yuan 2019), and thus unevenly or irregularly grown teeth (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Irregularly aligned teeth of a domesticated pig (Yuan 2019).

Secondly, LEH (Linear Enamel Hypoplasia) is a condition concerning transverse markings on tooth enamel, which are formed during the developmental stages of a tooth crown (Figure 2), often due to malnutrition and mental stress (Magnell and Carter 2007). Since boars foraged their food in the wild, a balanced diet tended to be more approachable, promising a variety of sustenance. Therefore, LEH has a much lower rate of occurrence on wild boars’ enamel. On the other hand, domesticated and thus fed by humans, pigs had a less varied diet. Namely, household left-overs primarily with rich starch content, such as barley or oat, were given to pigs. Above that, being kept in a restricted space, domesticated pigs were stressed out by the captivity, leading to a higher chance of suffering from LEH. Thus, domesticated pigs tend to have a high LEH occurrence rate (Yuan 2019).

Figure 2: LEH markings on tooth enamel (Magnell and Carter 2007).

Last but not least, dental calculus, marked by a “mineralized plaque that accumulates on the surface of a tooth” (Weber and Price 2015), is also a sign that differentiates a domesticated pig from a wild boar. As mentioned above, due to the emergence of a high-starch diet, domesticated pigs were more prone to getting such a condition. Interestingly, aside from being a tool for identification, this condition, typically spotted with micro-remains of starch granules, is also used to determine the ancient diet for domesticated pigs (Weber and Price 2015). For further readings on this topic: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X15301863

To read more about dental variations between domestic and wild Sus scrofa: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4328033/

Images:

Figure 1:

Yuan, Jing

2019     The Story of Pigs. Electronic document,

https://archsci.fudan.edu.cn/84/8c/c16569a165004/page.htm, accessed September 28, 2019

Figure 2:

Magnell and R. Carter

2007     THE CHRONOLOGY OF TOOTH DEVELOPMENT IN WILD BOAR – A GUIDE TO AGE DETERMINATION OF LINEAR ENAMEL HYPOPLASIA IN PREHISTORIC AND MEDIEVAL PIGS. Electronic document,

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/191f/6c636c2403c2b87d92074985673494508c5e.pdf, accessed September 28, 2019.

References:

Renfew and P. Bahn

2018     Archaeology Essentials (Theories/Methods/Practice). 4th ed. Thames & Hudson, London.

Magnell and R. Carter

2007     THE CHRONOLOGY OF TOOTH DEVELOPMENT IN WILD BOAR – A GUIDE TO AGE DETERMINATION OF LINEAR ENAMEL HYPOPLASIA IN PREHISTORIC AND MEDIEVAL PIGS. Electronic document,

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/191f/6c636c2403c2b87d92074985673494508c5e.pdf, accessed September 28, 2019.

Weber and Max D. Price

2015     What the pig ate: A microbotanical study of pig dental calculus from 10th–3rd millennium BC northern Mesopotamia. Electronic document,

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X15301863, accessed September 28, 2019

Yuan, Jing

2019     The Story of Pigs. Electronic document,

https://archsci.fudan.edu.cn/84/8c/c16569a165004/page.htm, accessed September 28, 2019