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.
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 Ake Site is a name for a prehistoric archaeological location near the town of Datil in the San Augustine Basin of Catron County, New Mexico, United States. It was listed on the New Mexico Register of Cultural Properties in 1975, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. The Ake Site is particularly important for the age and length of its use by prehistoric peoples. It has been dated during the Clovis period between 10,999 BC and 8000 BC, and during the Folsom period between 7999 BC and 5999 BC, making it among the oldest sites in the American Southwest.
Hester Site is a major prehistoric archaeological site in Monroe County, Mississippi. It is a multicomponent site whose major occupation took place during the Archaic period with artifacts dating from 9000 to 8000 BCE, and other occupations during the Woodland and Mississippian periods. The site is one of the largest Archaic sites in the southeastern United States, and its well-stratified nature was critical in providing for accurate relative dating of finds at other sites throughout the region. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2001.
Mound Bottom is a prehistoric Native American complex in Cheatham County, Tennessee, located in the Southeastern United States. The complex, which consists of earthen platform and burial mounds, a 7-acre central plaza, and habitation areas, was occupied between approximately 1000 and 1300 AD, during the Mississippian period.
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.
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)
Tallassee is a prehistoric and historic Native American site in present-day Blount and Monroe counties, Tennessee in the southeastern United States. Tallassee was the southernmost of a string of Overhill Cherokee towns that existed along the lower Little Tennessee River on the west side of the Appalachian Mountains in the 18th century. Although Tallassee receives scant attention in primary historical accounts, it is one of the few Overhill towns to be shown on every major 18th-century map of the Little Tennessee Valley.
The archaeology of Iowa is the study of the buried remains of human culture within the U.S. state of Iowa from the earliest prehistoric through the late historic periods. When the American Indians first arrived in what is now Iowa more than 13,000 years ago, they were hunters and gatherers living in a Pleistocene glacial landscape. By the time European explorers visited Iowa, American Indians were largely settled farmers with complex economic, social, and political systems. This transformation happened gradually. During the Archaic period American Indians adapted to local environments and ecosystems, slowly becoming more sedentary as populations increased. More than 3,000 years ago, during the Late Archaic period, American Indians in Iowa began utilizing domesticated plants. The subsequent Woodland period saw an increase on the reliance on agriculture and social complexity, with increased use of mounds, ceramics, and specialized subsistence. During the Late Prehistoric period increased use of maize and social changes led to social flourishing and nucleated settlements. The arrival of European trade goods and diseases in the Protohistoric period led to dramatic population shifts and economic and social upheaval, with the arrival of new tribes and early European explorers and traders. During the Historical period European traders and American Indians in Iowa gave way to American settlers and Iowa was transformed into an agricultural state.
The Pisgah phase is an archaeological phase of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture in Southeast North America. It is associated with the Appalachian Summit area of southeastern Tennessee, Western North Carolina, and northwestern South Carolina in what is now the United States.
The Coats–Hines–Litchy site is a paleontological site located in Williamson County, Tennessee, in the Southeastern United States. The site was formerly believed to be archaeological, and identified as one of only a very few locations in Eastern North America containing evidence of Paleoindian hunting of late Pleistocene proboscideans. Excavations at the site have yielded portions of four mastodon skeletons, including portions of one previously described as being in direct association with Paleoindian stone tools. The results of excavations have been published in Tennessee Conservationist, and the scholarly journals Current Research in the Pleistocene, Tennessee Archaeology, and Quaternary Science Reviews. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 12, 2011.
The Summer Island site, designated 20DE4, is an archaeological site located on the northwest side of Summer Island, in Delta County, Michigan. It is classified as a stratified, multi-component site with Middle Woodland, Upper Mississippian and Early Historic/Protohistoric occupations. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
The Spikebuck Town Mound and Village Site is a prehistoric and historic archaeological site on Town Creek near its confluence with the Hiwassee River within the boundaries of present-day Hayesville, North Carolina. The site encompasses the former area of the Cherokee village of Quanassee and associated farmsteads. The village was centered on what is known as Spikebuck Mound, an earthwork platform mound, likely built about 1,000 CE by ancestral indigenous peoples during the South Appalachian Mississippian culture period.
Too-Cowee, was an important historic Cherokee town located near the Little Tennessee River north of present-day Franklin, North Carolina. It also had a prehistoric platform mound and earlier village built by ancestral peoples. As their expression of public architecture, the Cherokee built a townhouse on top of the mound. It was the place for their community gatherings in their highly decentralized society. The name translates to "pig fat" in English. British traders and colonists referred to Cowee as one of the Cherokee Middle Towns along this river; they defined geographic groupings based in relation to their coastal settlements, such as Charlestown, South Carolina.
The Moccasin Bluff site is an archaeological site located along the Red Bud Trail and the St. Joseph River north of Buchanan, Michigan. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, and has been classified as a multi-component prehistoric site with the major component dating to the Late Woodland/Upper Mississippian period.
Hiwassee Island, also known as Jollys Island and Benham Island, is located in Meigs County, Tennessee, at the confluence of the Tennessee and Hiwassee Rivers. It is about 35 mi (56 km) northeast of Chattanooga. The island was the second largest land mass on the Tennessee River at 781 acres before the Tennessee Valley Authority created the Chickamauga Lake as a part of the dam system on the Tennessee River in 1940. Much of the island is now submerged, leaving 400 acres above the waterline.
