The Sangamo Frontier
History and Archaeology in the Shadow of Lincoln
- Contents
- Review Quotes
- Awards

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Journey to Sangamo
Part 1: Americans, Frontiers, and Archaeology
1 The Making of an American Frontier
2 The Arrival of Archaeology and the Shadow of Lincoln
Part 2: Illinois in History
3 Before the Americans
4 The Americans
Part 3: Archaeology of the Frontier
5 At Home, 1800–1840
6 Under the House, Behind the House
7 Goods in the Forests
Part 4: The Origins of Sangamo
8 The Hole in the Map
9 A New Frontier
Part 5: The Archaeology of Sangamo
10 Overlooking Wilderness: Excavations at Elkhart Hill
11 Earthenware at Cotton Hill: The Ebey-Brunk Kiln Site
12 The Origins of a State Capital: The Iles Store Site
13 Moses’s Sangamo: Relocating a Lost Town
14 Exploring Moses’s Sangamo: Excavations at Sangamo Town
15 Lincoln’s New Salem: History and Archaeology
16 Behind Lincoln’s New Salem: Archaeology and Revisionism
17 The End of the Trail
Notes
Index
“Until I was introduced to Robert Mazrim’s splendid book I had never heard of Sangamo Town—which was not surprising since it had lived out its life and vanished by 1850. While towns of the ancient world tended to last for centuries, in America progress means that very little is built for permanence. We shovel away the past with scarcely a word of regret. The author’s study of Sangamo County not only makes fascinating reading but also serves as classic demonstration of the elements that, when woven together, bring the lost past to life. There are many other lost towns from Virginia to California, every one of which can provide scholars and students with an exercise in archaeohistorical deduction—but first they must read Robert Mazrim’s The Sangamo Frontier.”
“In The Sangamo Frontier, the culmination of years of determined and loving detection, the archaeologist Robert Mazrim brings a searchlight to bear on the region’s early material culture and documentary sources. We accompany him on painstaking excavations that inform a study graced by shrewd scholarship and assured revisionism. Mazrim exposes the complex layers of Native American, French, and early American habitation. He rescues extinct settlements. He corrects misinterpretations and mislabeled sites, not least in Lincoln’s New Salem. He shows the remarkable—because routine—presence of fine imported pottery in frontier log houses. His readers will not see the Land of Lincoln in quite the same way again.”
“Robert Mazrim makes archaeology interesting for a broad audience in the way that Carl Sagan did for astronomy and Stephen Jay Gould did for paleontology and natural history. He breaks new ground in studying frontier history using the findings from various digs in central Illinois. And his study comes at a fortuitous time as Illinois and the nation prepare to celebrate the Lincoln Bicentennial.”
Illinois State Historical Society: Russell Strange Memorial Book Award
Won
Geography: Cultural and Historical Geography
History: American History
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