Geographical Place Names and North American Archaeology	by Gary S. Foster, Ph.D.
Central States Archaeological Societies 2025 April Journal	Eastern Illinois University

Figure 1. Great Serpent Mound in Ohio.

Introduction
Geographical place names or toponyms are the subject matter of toponymy, or toponymics (see Rennick 1988, 1997, 2024). In the intersection of place names and prehistory, language is a paramount impediment. Contemporary communication is not privileged to prehistoric languages and thus there is a linguistical bias in considering place names. Still, in our singular linguistical constraints, we attribute place names to prehistoric entities, naming them as such, and we use prehistoric features to name places. Prehistoric cultures and sites have come to be known by the names of nearby place names (communities), and some places have come to be known and named after nearby archaeological sites and features. This is a dimension of archaeology rarely considered or contemplated, and yet it is a part of archaeology that we dimly recognize when we read certain signs when entering a town or see a place name on a map (Fig. 1). Some places with archaeological names (or places that gave archaeological names) have their own ZIP codes, and we go to them or through them. Other places are cultural features, features that we use in our navigation of the terrain, “just three miles beyond take the crossroad to the right.” Through archaeological place names, we are often fixed and oriented in the landscape.

Places Naming Archaeology
Sometimes, we attribute place names to earlier cultures and archaeological events. Archaeological sites and even cultures are named after nearby place names. Perhaps the best known is the Clovis culture and the Clovis point. When artifacts were discovered in 1929 by Ridgely Whiteman just south of the town of Clovis, New Mexico, at the Blackwater Draw archaeological site, national media attention spotlighted the finds. Shortly after, a people and their projectile points came to be known as the Clovis culture, which is now our contemporary name for this prehistoric culture, thought to be among the earliest inhabitants of the New World (13,050-12,750 BP). Similarly, Kennewick, Washington, gave its name and identity to its most famous resident citizen, Kennewick Man, who lived some 8,400-8,690 BP. Sometimes, an owner’s name is used to identify or designate a site. Such is the case for the Jewell Site (15Bn21), a Mississippian complex, circa 800 CE-1400/1600 CE, so named because it was on the Jewell farm when it was first noted in the mid-1800s.

Archaeological sites and features are often named and identified by local place names and people, and those names remain and endure long after those people and place names have faded and disappeared. Entire communities have declined and disappeared, forgotten and dismissed except by the presence of a small, overgrown cemetery and perhaps nearby archaeological features that retained their staying power by their antiquity. Sometimes, however, the ...

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