Qualla: Summer Island Site https://qualla.com/summer-island-site en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:18 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/f/0/4/7/summer-island-site-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Summer Island Site https://qualla.com/summer-island-site Summer Island Site: Introduction https://qualla.com/summer-island-site/ Photo credit David S. Brose, Public domain. The pot sherds came first. In 1959, George I. Quimby arrived on the northwest shore of Summer Island in Delta County, Michigan, collected fragments of broken pottery from the surface, and dug test pits that turned up animal bones and more sherds. He had found the edge of something. Eight years later, David S. Brose returned and excavated extensively, uncovering a stratified site with three distinct cultural layers stacked like chapters in a book no one had opened for centuries. The earliest layer dated to around 70 to 250 A.D. The second to approximately 1290 A.D. The third coincided with the first decades of European contact, around 1620 A.D. or perhaps later. Each layer held its own hearths, its own storage pits, its own style of pottery -- and each told a different story about who had lived here, what they traded, and how far their connections reached. The Summer Island Site, designated 20DE4, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. It had earned its place.

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Image: David S. Brose | Public domain

]]> Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/f/0/4/7/summer-island-site-wp/f047-summer-island-site-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Summer Island Site: The First Fires https://qualla.com/summer-island-site/ Photo credit David S. Brose, Public domain. The earliest occupants were Middle Woodland period peoples who arrived sometime around 70 A.D. and stayed through roughly 250 A.D. They left behind the outlines of four house structures, their post molds preserved in the soil like architectural blueprints. Archaeologists document...

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Image: David S. Brose | Public domain

]]> Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/f/0/4/7/summer-island-site-wp/f047-summer-island-site-the-first-fires.mp3 0:06 2 full Summer Island Site: Pottery from Distant Hands https://qualla.com/summer-island-site/ Photo credit David S. Brose, Public domain. The Upper Mississippian component, dating to around 1290 A.D., brought a different culture with distinctive pottery traditions. Researchers identified vessels in the Koshkonong Bold style -- shell-tempered, globular forms with sharply everted flat rims and finger-pinched lips, th...

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Image: David S. Brose | Public domain

]]> Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/f/0/4/7/summer-island-site-wp/f047-summer-island-site-pottery-from-distant-hands.mp3 0:06 3 full Summer Island Site: The Contact Layer https://qualla.com/summer-island-site/ Photo credit David S. Brose, Public domain. The most recent occupation, radiocarbon-dated to approximately 1620 A.D., places Summer Island at the turbulent intersection of European contact. Sixteen pottery vessels were recovered from this layer, and their origins read like a map of displacement. Some connect to the Potawat...

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Image: David S. Brose | Public domain

]]> Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/f/0/4/7/summer-island-site-wp/f047-summer-island-site-the-contact-layer.mp3 0:06 4 full Summer Island Site: Reading the Layers https://qualla.com/summer-island-site/ Photo credit David S. Brose, Public domain. What makes the Summer Island Site exceptional is its stratification -- three clean cultural layers separated by time, each preserving a distinct snapshot of life on this small island. Wilbert B. Hinsdale had noted the site in his 1931 Archaeological Atlas of Michigan, but it took...

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Image: David S. Brose | Public domain

]]> Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/f/0/4/7/summer-island-site-wp/f047-summer-island-site-reading-the-layers.mp3 0:06 5 full