Jefferson Chapman (born 1943) is an archaeologist who conducted extensive excavations at sites in eastern Tennessee, recovering evidence that provided the first secure radiocarbon chronology for Early and Middle Archaic period assemblages in Eastern North America. [1] He also is a research professor in anthropology and the Director of the Frank H. McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Chapman’s professional interests include Southeastern archaeology, paleoethnobotany, museology and public archaeology.
Chapman was born in Kinston, North Carolina, on March 13, 1943. He received his Bachelor of Arts in anthropology from Yale University in 1965 and an M.A.T. in history and education from Brown University in 1968. Chapman completed a master's degree in anthropology in 1973 and a Ph.D. in anthropology in 1975 from the University of North Carolina. He has conducted archaeology studies for over 40 years and has written twenty books, dozens of journal articles and many other technical publications. He married Carol Cannon, daughter of poet Marion Wadsworth Cannon, in 1965; they had two daughters. Carol died in 1985, from colon cancer. [2]
Chapman began his career as a teacher at the Webb School of Knoxville (1965–1967) and was later promoted to be the chairman of the social studies department (1968–1971). Since 1984, he has been a research associate professor and, from 1990 to 2019, was the director of the Frank H. McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Since 1959, Chapman has also worked as an archaeologist.
Chapman has participated in numerous archaeological excavations in Tennessee including work on the Barkley Reservoir (1959, 1962), [1] [3] Melton Hill Reservoir (1960–1961) and the Tellico Reservoir (1970–1981). [1] [4] Research in the Tennessee River Valley has documented a Native American presence over the last 12,000 years. [1] [5]
Work at the Icehouse Bottom site (1970–1971 and 1975) uncovered the best evidence for early cultivation of maize in eastern North America. [6] Other fieldworks Chapman led or participated in are the Howard Site, [7] the Bacon Bend Site, [8] Iddins Rose Island, [8] Kimberly-Clark site (1989), [9] and the Calloway Island site. [10]
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In 1987, Chapman was made an Honorary Fellow of the Lower Mississippi Survey, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. In 1991, Webb School of Knoxville awarded him its Distinguished Alumnus Award. He was awarded the Robert Webb Distinguished Award in 2002. In 2006, the Tennessee Friends of Sequoyah awarded him with the Sequoyah Excellence Award.
Chapman's research concentrates on the material remains in paleoethnobotony, museology and public archaeology in the southeast United States and Americas.
Monroe County is a county located on the eastern border of the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 46,250. Its county seat is Madisonville, and its largest city is Sweetwater.
Loudon County is a county in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is located in the central part of East Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 54,886. Its county seat is Loudon. Loudon County is included in the Knoxville, TN Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Vonore is a town in Monroe County, Tennessee, which is located on the southeast border of the state. The population was 1,574 as of the 2020 census. The city hall, library, community center, police department, and fire department are located on Church Street.
The Little Tennessee River is a 135-mile (217 km) tributary of the Tennessee River that flows through the Blue Ridge Mountains from Georgia, into North Carolina, and then into Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. It drains portions of three national forests— Chattahoochee, Nantahala, and Cherokee— and provides the southwestern boundary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Chota is a historic Overhill Cherokee town site in Monroe County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. Developing after nearby Tanasi, Chota was the most important of the Overhill towns from the late 1740s until 1788. It replaced Tanasi as the de facto capital, or 'mother town' of the Cherokee people.
Tanasi was a historic Overhill settlement site in present-day Monroe County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. The village became the namesake for the state of Tennessee. It was abandoned by the Cherokee in the 19th century for a rising town whose chief was more powerful. Tanasi served as the de facto capital of the Overhill Cherokee from as early as 1721 until 1730, when the capital shifted to Great Tellico.
Icehouse Bottom is a prehistoric Native American site in Monroe County, Tennessee, located on the Little Tennessee River in the southeastern United States. Native Americans were using the site as a semi-permanent hunting camp as early as 7500 BC, making it one of the oldest-known habitation areas in Tennessee. Analysis of the site's Woodland period artifacts shows evidence of an extensive trade network that reached to indigenous peoples in Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio. This was later an area of known Cherokee settlements, the people encountered by Anglo-European settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Bat Creek inscription is an inscribed stone tablet found by John W. Emmert on February 14, 1889. Emmert claimed to have found the tablet in Tipton Mound 3 during an excavation of Hopewell mounds in Loudon County, Tennessee. This excavation was part of a larger series of excavations that aimed to clarify the controversy regarding who is responsible for building the various mounds found in the Eastern United States.
Toqua was a prehistoric and historic Native American site in Monroe County, Tennessee, located in the Southeastern Woodlands. Toqua was the site of a substantial ancestral town that thrived during the Mississippian period. Toqua had a large earthwork 25-foot (7.6 m) platform mound built by the town's Mississippian-era inhabitants, in addition to a second, smaller mound. The site's Mississippian occupation may have been recorded by the Spanish as the village of Tali, which was documented in 1540 by the Hernando de Soto expedition. It was later known as the Overhill Cherokee town Toqua, and this name was applied to the archeological site.
Tomotley is a prehistoric and historic Native American site along the lower Little Tennessee River in Monroe County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. Occupied as early as the Archaic period, the Tomotley site was occupied particularly during the Mississippian period, which was likely when its earthwork platform mounds were built. It was also occupied during the eighteenth century as a Cherokee town. It revealed an unexpected style: an octagonal townhouse and square or rectangular residences. In the Overhill period, Cherokee townhouses found in the Carolinas in the same period were circular in design, with,
Citico is a prehistoric and historic Native American site in Monroe County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. The site's namesake Cherokee village was the largest of the Overhill towns, housing an estimated Indian population of 1,000 by the mid-18th century. The Mississippian village that preceded the site's Cherokee occupation is believed to have been the village of "Satapo" visited by the Juan Pardo expedition in 1567.
Chilhowee was a prehistoric and historic Native American site in present-day Blount and Monroe counties in Tennessee, in what were the Southeastern Woodlands. Although now submerged by the Chilhowee Lake impoundment of the Little Tennessee River, the Chilhowee site was home to a substantial 18th-century Overhill Cherokee town. It may have been the site of the older Creek village "Chalahume" visited by Spanish explorer Juan Pardo in 1567. The Cherokee later pushed the Muscogee Creek out of this area.
Mialoquo is a prehistoric and historic Native American site in Monroe County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. The site saw significant periods of occupation during the Mississippian period and later as a Cherokee refugee village. While the archaeological site of Mialoquo was situated on the southwest bank of the Little Tennessee River, the village's habitation area probably included part of Rose Island, a large island in the river immediately opposite the site. Rose Island was occupied on at least a semi-permanent basis as early as the Middle Archaic period.
David G. Anderson is an archaeologist in the department of anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who specializes in Southeastern archaeology. His professional interests include climate change and human response, exploring the development of cultural complexity in Eastern North America, maintaining and improving the nation's Cultural Resource management (CRM) program, teaching and writing about archaeology, and developing technical and popular syntheses of archaeological research. He is the project director of the on-line Paleoindian Database of the Americas (PIDBA). and a co-director, with Joshua J. Wells, Eric C, Kansa, and Sarah Whitcher Kansa, of the Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA)
Gerald F. Schroedl is a professor of anthropology at the University of Tennessee. He specializes in Southeastern United States and Caribbean prehistoric and historic archaeological sites. He is an authority on Cherokee prehistory and the archaeology of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina.
Bussell Island, formerly Lenoir Island, is an island located at the mouth of the Little Tennessee River, at its confluence with the Tennessee River in Loudon County, near the U.S. city of Lenoir City, Tennessee. The island was inhabited by various Native American cultures for thousands of years before the arrival of early European explorers. The Tellico Dam and a recreational area occupy part of the island. Part of the island was added in 1978 to the National Register of Historic Places for its archaeological potential.
Lynne Sullivan is an American archaeologist and former Curator of Archaeology for the Frank H. McClung Museum located on the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville, Tennessee. A graduate of the University of Tennessee (undergraduate) and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Sullivan is renowned for her research and publications on subjects such as Southeastern United States prehistory, Mississippian chiefdoms, mortuary analysis, and archaeological curation. She has been a major contributor to the feminist/gender archaeology movement through her studies in social inequality, gender roles, and the historic significance of women in the development of modern archaeology.
The Normandy Archaeological Project was a rescue excavation designed to preserve the archaeological history of the area before it became submerged by the construction of the Normandy Reservoir Dam through funding from the Tennessee Valley Authority. After the construction of the dam, historic information about that area could not be accessed, so prior to the construction of the dam, as much research as possible had to be done on the area. This salvage effort was conducted in the Duck River Valley area, of middle Tennessee from March 1971 until the summer of 1975, prior to the completion of the dam in 1976. The fieldwork was done mainly by researchers from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, under contract to the Tennessee Valley Authority Contract and National Park. The dam creating the Normandy Reservoir was built on the Duck River at mile marker 248.6 in Coffee and Bedford County, Tennessee, named after the town of Normandy, Tennessee. The two nearest cities are Manchester and Tullahoma.
Charles Harrison McNutt III was an American archaeologist and a scholar of the prehistoric Southeastern United States. He conducted fieldwork and published works on the archaeology of the American Southwest and the Great Plains in South Dakota. His work emphasized on a strong understanding of cultural history and statistical analysis.
Madeline Kneberg Lewis (1903–1996) was an American archaeologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Tennessee. She is most famous for her work on excavations in the Tennessee Valley, beginning in the 1930s. She was instrumental in establishing the anthropology department at the University of Tennessee as well as the Frank H. McClung Museum. She was the first female full professor at Tennessee outside of home economics and among the first prominent female archaeologists in the United States.
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