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Table of Contents

• Iowa’s Earliest Residents
  • Rummells-Maske Site
  • Carlisle Cache
• Prairie Peninsula in Iowa Over the Last 18,000 Years
• Cast of Plants
  • Sunflower
  • Little Barley
  • Goosefoot or Lamb’s Quarters
  • Marshelder or Sumpweed
  • Erect Knotweed
  • Maygrass
  • Gourds and Squashes
  • Maize or Corn
  • Beans
  • Tobacco
• How Do We Know?
• Cultivated or Domesticated?
• Major References for Crops of Ancient Iowa

The Carlisle Clovis cache dates to the end of the last Ice Age and represents the earliest, intact archaeological site excavated in Iowa. It includes 38 unfinished tools that were recovered near Carlisle in Warren County by Iowa State University archaeologists. The character, composition, and location of the cache suggest it was established to supply a stone-poor landscape with tool preforms that Clovis hunters could convert quickly into spearpoints and butchery tools.

Text by Matthew G. Hill, Iowa State University