The Kerr Canyon Textile and the Importance of Packrats (Neotoma floridana) in the Eastern Woodlands

In 1974 a section of uncarbonized textile made from rattlesnake master leaves (Eryngium yuccifolium Michx.) was recovered from an eastern woodrat (Neotoma floridana) midden in a sandstone rockshelter along Kerr Canyon in the Shawnee Hills of southern Illinois. Even though this important discovery was brought to the attention of local archaeologists, the textile went unreported and unanalyzed until its recent rediscovery. A radiocarbon assay of fibers removed directly from the textile produced a late Middle Archaic date (4500 B.P.). The Kerr Canyon Textile is significant because it is the earliest reported uncarbonized textile from Illinois and because it adds new information to the meager list of Archaic period textiles from the Midcontinent.