Morning Program, January 28

Kevin E. Smith (Middle Tennessee State University)

During Ed Myer’s 1891 excavations at the Castalian Springs Mounds in Sumner County, he recovered two marine shell gorgets that have been described as Moorehead Style Crib gorgets. These rare gorgets reveal a relationship amongst Etowah, Moundville, and Castalian Springs during the Early Wilbanks phase (AD 1250-1325). With the decline and abandonment of the Castalian Springs polity, Etowah’s primary long-distance engagement with the Middle Cumberland Region during the Late Wilbanks phase (AD 1325-1375) appears to have shifted to the Sellars and Rutherford-Kizer polities. The application of both type-variety and stylistic approaches to marine shell gorgets from Castalian Springs provides a powerful demonstration of long-distance connections amongst elite individuals – either through kinship or, more likely, through social houses.

J. Scott Jones (Midsouth Cultural Resources Consulting)

The Parrish site (40Dv152) is a multi-component prehistoric site located in Davidson County, TN. Of particular interest are Woodland and Mississippian occupations. Newly acquired radiocarbon dates place late prehistoric occupations in the 11th and 14th centuries. A fourteenth-century occupation for the Mississippian occupation is substantiated by a shell-tempered assemblage with few post-14th century horizon markers such as applique’ rim bowls, effigy vessels, or incised rim vessels. The eleventh-century association is surprising as these dates are associated with limestone-tempered, cordmarked ceramics that are typically associated with the Middle Woodland period. Implications for a Late Woodland occupation and the emergence of the Mississippian period in the Middle Cumberland region are discussed.

Aubrey Roemer (University of Tennessee -Knoxville)
Jan Simek (University of Tennessee -Knoxville)
Alan Cressler (University of Tennessee/Cave Art Research Team)
Bill Deane (University of Tennessee/Cave Art Research Team)

In the past forty years, continued archaeological research has illuminated an expansive and long standing tradition of rock art production in the North American Southeast. Ancient rock art has been differentiated by methods of technical application: pictographs, petroglyphs, and mud glyphs. These categorical typologies are used to describe discreet artistic processes, as a framework for broadly understanding the diversity and distribution of modes of artistic production. However, continued research efforts have offered a finer-grain resolution for categorizing ancient indigenous artistic disciplines in the Southeast. This includes the preparation of surfaces specifically for the act of art making. This paper discusses surface preparation as it has been seen in tandem with pictographs, petroglyphs, and mud glyphs in known open air and subterranean spaces, but focuses on the artwork in Mud Glyph Cave as an exceptional example of this artistic technology.

Alison Damick (University of Tennessee -Knoxville)

Phytoliths are siliceous microparticles that form inside the cells and intracellular spaces of plants and take on the shapes of the spaces in which they formed. When the organic plant bodies decay, phytoliths are deposited in the sediments in which they decayed and remain there indefinitely. Phytoliths can then be extracted from buried soils and sediments and analyzed to determine what vegetation communities were present in the past, and how different parts of plants appear in archaeological contexts. This paper will discuss the utility of phytolith research for paleoenvironmental reconstructions, particularly in alluvial contexts, as well as archaeological site-based applications. Examples from the author's prior research in New Mexico and Lebanon will be used to show how such approaches can and should be applied to Tennessee environmental archaeology, where phytolith analyses have been rare to date.

Dwayne Estes (Southeastern Grasslands Institute, Center of Excellence for Field Biology, Austin Peay State University)

Within the past five years, the Southeastern Grasslands Institute (SGI) has called for a complete revaluation of Tennessee's historical and prehistorical landscape. Through most of the 20th and earliest 21st centuries, ecologists and historians alike portrayed Tennessee as nearly completely forested at the time of Euro-American settlement except for open areas near Native American settlements, glades, marshes, windfalls, burns, or cliffs. Yet this popular view simply doesn't comport with accumulating information from biological, ecological, and historical sources. Data suggest that perhaps as much as 30-40% of the Tennessee landscape (up to 10 million acres) was dominated by prairies, savannas, meadows, glades, barrens, balds, open wetlands, and open grassy woodlands. While much of this open landscape likely was managed by Native Americans during the Holocene, biological data suggest some of these grasslands pre-date human occupation in the Mid-South. These revelations present major implications for Tennessee’s cultural history, archaeology, ecology, and conservation.

Jan F. Simek (University of Tennessee - Knoxville)
Jeremy Price (Winchester, TN)
Alan Cressler (University of Tennessee/Cave Art Research Team)

For several years, professional and avocational researchers have surveyed rockshelter and bluff locations along the South Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee and Alabama. In 2021, a rockshelter was identified containing numerous elaborate petroglyphs along the back wall. Named the "Wall of Life," the site exhibits deeply engraved spirals carved into the sandstone forming the shelter. Some of these are quite elaborate and comprise multiple figures; others are simple single spirals. In at least one instance, an unfinished figure shows how the glyphs were made. Artifacts from looter holes in the floor sediments suggest an Archaic age for the site.

Timothy Baumann (McClung Museum, University of Tennessee)

Working with eight Native Nations, the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Tennessee (UT) opened a new exhibition explaining the ethical and legal process on the repatriation of Native American Ancestral Remains and cultural items back to their proper cultural communities. This exhibition reimagines the 22-year-old Archaeology & Native Peoples of Tennessee gallery to highlight repatriation's vital role in preserving and commemorating Indigenous cultures. Visitors to the exhibition will notice many items previously on display have been removed as a part of the repatriation process as mandated by Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA). The updated gallery walls and videos incorporate Native voices explaining the importance of NAGPRA and its significance towards Native American sovereignty and human rights. This exhibit transformation is the result of the museum's desire to be transparent with the public and to strengthen relationships with Native Nations.

Paul Eubanks (Middle Tennessee State University)
Kevin E. Smith (Middle Tennessee State University)

After a two-year hiatus, Middle Tennessee State University resumed its annual archaeological field school in the summer of 2022 at the Castalian Springs mound site (ca. AD 1200 – 1350). Between 2017 and 2019, the field school excavated at this site’s mineral springs, but this past summer we shifted our focus a couple of hundred meters to the north to its central ceremonial precinct. Our excavations were located on a low rise just to the west of Mound 2, the site’s largest mound, and at “Mound 25,” a possible mound in the southwestern corner of the plaza. The work near Mound 2 yielded numerous examples of raw crystalline artifacts, supporting the idea that there may have been a crystalline workshop to the west of Mound 2. Although more work is needed at Mound 25, it appears that this mound contains the remains of at least one dismantled and buried special-purpose structure.

Ryan M. Parish (University of Memphis)
J. Scott Jones (Midsouth Cultural Resource Consulting)
Mark R. Norton (Tennessee Division of Archaeology, retired)
John B. Broster (Tennessee Division of Archaeology, retired)

The source of chert artifacts from the Carson-Conn-Short site (40BN190) informs us about the use of local lithic resources and the longer distance sources indicate group mobility and/or interaction. The site is located along the floodplain of the Tennessee River and consists of seven loci containing artifacts spanning the range of diagnostic Terminal Pleistocene tools. Deposits of Fort Payne chert are located on either bank and visual identification of the assemblage suggests a heavy reliance on these nearby sources. Additionally, the presence of artifacts manufactured from exotic sources gives us significant behavioral information. Analytical chert source data illustrates these patterns.

Michael J. Miller (Fort Campbell Contractor / SpecPro Professional Services, LLC)

This research on heat alteration of Upper St. Louis and Warsaw cherts compares experimental and archaeological specimen data to provide an understanding of precontact use of heat to purposely modify lithic material. Knapped chert flakes and bifaces were heat treated in a controlled environment following an experimental protocol to track the effects of heat on the physical properties of chert. Testing specimens at set temperature intervals identified when physical changes occurred. Reduction of experimental lithic samples tested and measured mechanical property change related to fracturability. Comparative artifact analysis of heat-altered lithics from Tennessee state site number 40MT0586 correlated with experimental data showed planned intentional heat treatment by Archaic stone tool manufacturers at Fort Campbell.