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 what is now the state of 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 historic people encountered by Anglo-European settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Bat Creek inscription is an inscribed stone collected as part of a Native American burial mound excavation in Loudon County, Tennessee, in 1889 by the Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology's Mound Survey, directed by entomologist Cyrus Thomas. The inscriptions were initially described as Cherokee, but in 2004, similarities to an inscription that was circulating in a Freemason book were discovered. Hoax expert Kenneth Feder says the peer-reviewed work of Mary L. Kwas and Robert Mainfort has "demolished" any claims of the stone's authenticity. Mainfort and Kwas themselves state "The Bat Creek stone is a fraud."
The Old Stone Fort is a prehistoric Native American structure located in Coffee County, Tennessee, in the Southeastern United States. The structure was most likely built between 80 and 550 AD during the Middle Woodland period. It is the most complex hilltop enclosure found in the South and was likely used for ceremonial purposes rather than defense.
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,
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.
The Upper Mississippian cultures were located in the Upper Mississippi basin and Great Lakes region of the American Midwest. They were in existence from approximately A.D. 1000 until the Protohistoric and early Historic periods.
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.
Jan F. Simek is an American archaeologist and educator who was the interim president of the University of Tennessee system from 2009–2010.
Dust Cave is a Paleoindian archaeology site located in northern Alabama. It is in the Highland Rim in the limestone bluffs that overlook Coffee Slough, a tributary of the Tennessee River. The site was occupied during the Pleistocene and early Holocene eras. 1LU496, another name for Dust Cave, was occupied seasonally for 7,000 years. The cave was first discovered in 1984 by Dr. Richard Cobb and first excavated in 1989 under Dr. Boyce Driskell from the University of Alabama.
Charles Harrison McNutt is an American archaeologist and a scholar of the prehistoric Southeastern United States. He has conducted fieldwork and published works on the archaeology of the American Southwest and the Great Plains in South Dakota. His work emphasizes 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.
Jefferson Chapman 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. 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.
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.
The Oak Forest Site (11Ck-53) is located in Oak Forest, Cook County, Illinois, near the city of Chicago. It is classified as a late Prehistoric to Protohistoric/Early Historic site with Upper Mississippian Huber affiliation.
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 miles 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.
Bennie Carlton Keel is an American archaeologist who has made contributions to the foundational understanding of Cherokee archaeology and culture, North Carolina archaeology, and to the development of Americanist cultural resource management (CRM).
