O'Fallon During Ancient Times
City of O'Fallon, Missouri, founded in 1856
Between 150 B.C. to 300 A.D, the streets of the city market would have been lined with merchants offering items such as ornate serving bowls and cooking vessels for your home, the latest style in hunting gear, new tools like granite celts (axe heads) for cutting trees, trendy jewelry like bone ear-spools for pierced ears, or necklaces made from strands of sea shells. You could choose among art objects, like a spoon-bill duck of carved wood (possibly inspired by a popular story), a pottery figurine such as a mother nursing her baby, or religious items including a representation of God made from delicately carved bone.
Like malls today, you may have seen excited teenagers drawn to this place to meet friends, and customers searching for the latest crafts or ceremonial items, the perfect accessory for the home, or new clothing that best reflected their values for others to see.
Perhaps there was even a "food court" at the market. Archaeologists have recovered evidence of wild game, including elk, fish, waterfowl, mussels, and a variety of wild and some cultivated plants including hazelnuts, hickory nuts, acorns, walnuts, maygrass, goosefoot, knotweek and sunflowers.
To get the items you wanted, you would barter with crafts you made, surplus food, or goods you acquired elsewhere by trade. The most popular trade items were copper ornaments from the Great Lakes, marine shell bead from the Gulf of Mexico, or even obsidian from Yellowstone National Park. From O'Fallon, Burlington chert was quarried and traded across a wide area. This chert could be easily worked into a wide variety of extremely sharp tools.
[Captions:]
Decorated bowl, pottery figurine and platform pipe were recovered from sites in Illinois that are contemporaries of O'Fallon's sites.
Cardinal Direction: North
Native Americans associated the north with cold, the color blue (and purple), and trouble and defeat.
Erected by the
this page online
Topics. This historical marker is listed in these topic lists: Anthropology & Archaeology • Arts, Letters, Music • Indigenous Peoples and Communities • Industry & Commerce. A significant historical year for this entry is 150 BCE.
Location. 38° 49.602′ N, 90° 42.593′ W. Marker is in O'Fallon, Missouri, in St. Charles County. It is on Dames Park Drive 0.7 miles west of State Highway P, on the left when traveling west. Touch for map. Marker is at or near this postal address: 387 Dames Park Dr, O Fallon MO 63366, United States of America. Touch for directions.
Regionally, this marker is in the Missouri River Corridor and in Greater St. Louis. It is also in the American Midwest, in the Lewis & Clark Corridor, in the Corn Belt, and in the Great River Road Region. Globally, it is in North America, the Western Hemisphere, the Western World, and the Anglosphere. Historically, it finds itself in what was once the territory of the Mississippian Culture, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Antebellum South.
Other nearby markers. At least 8 other markers are within 2 miles of this marker, measured
Also see . . . The Myth of the Barter Economy. This Atlantic article from 2016 shows that there is no proof that barter economies predate economies based in currency (money). In fact, the opposite is true: bartering economies derive from currency-based economies. (Submitted on March 27, 2021, by Devry Becker Jones of Washington, District of Columbia.)
Additional commentary.
1. Mindset of the marker
The mindset of the marker is rooted in current day social constructs.
There is no evidence that bartering ever existed prior to currency-based economies.
Additionally, our current construct of teenagers developed in the post-World War II economy. The notion of teenagers going to the mall is at this time dated at this time.
While the information is inaccurate, it tells a story so that readers can identify with a lifestyle that feels exotic to our contemporary lifestyles.
Credits. This page was last revised on March 27, 2021. It was originally submitted on March 27, 2021, by Devry Becker Jones of Washington, District of Columbia. This page has been viewed 668 times since then and 33 times this year. Photos: 1, 2. submitted on March 27, 2021, by Devry Becker Jones of Washington, District of Columbia.
