Changing Interpretations of Sandbar Village (40DV36): Mississippian Hamlet, Village, or Mound Center? (original) (raw)
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The Kelley's Battery site (40DV392) is a multi-component prehistoric site located on the Cumberland River in western Davidson County, Tennessee. Salvage excavations were conducted in 1998 prior to destruction of the site by development. Evidence of Paleoindian through Mississippian period occupations was recovered. Of particular interest is the excavation of two Mississippian stone-box cemeteries and associated village. An overview of the excavation is presented along with investigation results. A single radiocarbon date of 670+60 B.P. with a single-sigma calibrated range of AD 1282-1390 was obtained for the Mississippian occupation. The excavation and analysis results determined the Mississippian occupation of Kelley's Battery comprised a nucleated village primarily occupied during the period of regional decentralization (AD 1325-1425).
Tennessee Anthropologist 18(1):28-44, 1993
Tennessee Division ofArchaeology personnel have salvaged archaeological data from a privately-owned Mississippian mound-village complex 011 the Harpeth River on twO occasions over the past decade. The resulls of these limited salvage projects, along with a review of antiquarian observations ofthe site are presemed and imerpreted below. PrilTlilry occupation of the site area is interpreted as occurring during the 1hruston Phase (ca. A.D. 1250-1450), based on diagnostic ani/acts and a single radiocarbon date.
The Ames Site (40FY7): A Very Unobtrusive Mississippian Settlement Located in Southwestern Tennessee
…, 2011
Research at the Ames Mound and Settlement Complex (40FY7), located at the headwaters of the North Fork of the Wolf River, a tributary of the Mississippi, utilized a gradiometry survey, controlled surface collections, test-pitting, and large scale excavation to examine prehistoric landuse ca. 1000-1200 AD. The study resulted in the discovery of a large palisaded settlement associated with a small mound complex. Although the mound complex has been known to archaeologists for over half a century, the village remained undiscovered until recently. Our research demonstrates that in the Loess Plains of Western Tennessee, discovery methods such as shovel testing and controlled surface collecting can produce results that underestimate the significance of buried archaeological deposits, to the point that large settlements are being missed. The implication is that western Tennessee probably had several small mound complexes with associated villages during the Early Mississippian period.
Recent road cutting activity for private development along a Cumberland River bluff in western Davidson County exposed four structures and a large pit feature. Tennessee Division of Archaeology salvage efforts at the Ganier Tract site (40DV620) retrieved a modest assemblage of ceramic, lithic, faunal, and floral materials. The ceramic sample included Mississippi Plain loop and flattened loop handles suggestive of a Mississippian occupation that pre-dated AD 1325. A refined chronology for Middle Cumberland Mississippian sites was recently offered based upon critical data obtained through the 19 th-century Peabody Museum (Harvard) explorations across middle Tennessee (Moore and Smith 2009:202-210). This provisional framework defined five unnamed regional periods (I-V) in place of previously published chronologies (i.e. Dowd and Thruston phases/regional periods). Radiocarbon samples from three structures and the pit feature yielded corrected dates between AD 1213 and 1273. These dates place 40DV620 within the proposed Regional Period III (AD 1200-1325), a time of significant population expansion across the Middle Cumberland Region. The recovered ceramic assemblage with loop and flattened-loop jar handles meshes well with these date results.
Archaeological Investigations in the Upper Tombigbee Valley, Mississippi: Phase II
1983
: Data recovery to mitigate construction impacts was accomplished by the University of West Florida's Office of Cultural and Archaeological Research at four sites in the canal section of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. Large scale excavations conducted at the Beech and Oak sites, 22It622 and 22It624, producted a wealth of information on the preceramic Late Archaic occupations of these two sites, as well as their other prehistoric components. With some engineering to permit similar large scale excavations below the water table, investigations at the Hickory site, 22It621, yielded evidence of Early Archaic habitation in the buried paleosol, as well as later components above it. At a site with predominantly late prehistoric cultural deposits, 22It606, the many features excavated provided unusual evidence of Late Woodland/Mississippian ceramic and subsistence systems, as well as similar activities of earlier and later peoples. All four sites inves...
Tennessee Archaeology, 2012
Archaeological components dating to the Paleoindian and Early Archaic periods (>8000 rcybp) are relatively rare in the southeastern United States. However, the Middle Cumberland River contains several previously reported stratified sites dating to this time period. Here, we provide a preliminary description of one of these sites (Sanders #1, 40CH193), where lithic material, charcoal fragments, and a probable hearth feature were found eroding out of the shoreline of the Cumberland River 4.0 to 4.5 meters below ground surface. A radiocarbon date derived from this feature (AA96399; 9412 ± 54 14C yr BP; 10,649 ± 88 cal yr BP) indicates it is Early Archaic in age and may be associated with the Lost Lake and Kirk Corner–Notched bifaces recovered from the shoreline lag deposits. Other temporally diagnostic Paleoindian and Early Archaic artifacts were also recovered from the shoreline lag deposits, thus making a direct association between the radiocarbon date and the corner-notched bifac...
Tennessee Archaeology 6(1-2):149-163, 2012
Although the Beasley Mounds site (40SM43) has been known since the early nineteenth century, only brief antiquarian notes and limited collections have been available to evaluate its relationship to the Middle Cumberland culture sites of the Central Basin. As part of the on-going efforts of the Middle Cumberland Mississippian Survey to refine the boundaries and chronology of the region, we directed a small-scale mapping and excavation project at Beasley Mounds in early 2008. Resulting ceramic samples suggest that the site residents were more closely affiliated culturally to those of the upper Cumberland and East Tennessee than to their nearer neighbors to the west. A single radiocarbon date from platform mound construction at the site suggests that it served as a socio-political center contemporaneous with those at the nearby Castalian Springs and Sellars sites to the west and south -- but was occupied by people whose material culture was (ethnically?) distinct from those to the west and south and more closely related to those from the east and north.