This volume includes 10 chapters about Archaic period shell-bearing sites of the Middle Cumberland River Valley (MCRV) in central Tennessee. The MCRV encompasses more than 1,200 Archaic period components, 40 of which have shell deposits dating from the Middle to Late Archaic period (ca. 8900–3200 cal BP). A richly detailed introduction by Aaron Deter-Wolf and Tanya Peres discusses shell-bearing sites across the Archaic Southeast and considers different models for the origins, formations, and functions of these hunter-gatherer sites.
Subsequent chapters discuss previous excavations like those at Robinson Shell Mound and the Anderson site, as well as recent investigations of newly identified sites exposed by recent flooding and threatened by further erosion and looter activities. Collectively, reinterpretations of existing information and assessments of newly acquired archaeological, geomorphological, and hydrological data shape the perspectives articulated in these chapters about rapidly disappearing Archaic shell-bearing sites in the MCRV. Common themes are the diverse natural and cultural processes that shaped these sites and how materials found in shell deposits shed light on Archaic period hunter-gatherer settlement, subsistence, and ritual activities.
Deter-Wolf and Leslie Straub discuss the history of archaeology in the MCRV and describe major characteristics of shell-bearing sites. Despite dramatic increases in archaeological survey and testing, data resulting from those investigations had never been systematically examined from a regional perspective. This situation changed in 2015 when sites tested in 2010, along with previously known sites, served as the basis for a National Register nomination for Archaic shell-bearing sites in the MCRV, many of which are discussed in later chapters.
Peres and Deter-Wolf discuss the impacts of the massive 2010 flood that inundated many important sites. Funded by an NSF Rapid Response Funding award, survey crews examined 128 previously recorded sites, collecting archaeological and environmental data from endangered loci to assess site structure, location, and chronology, as well as molluscan species diversity. One surprising outcome of this work is that shell composition at sites largely consisted of gastropods, not bivalves, as archaeologists widely thought was the case. Investigations also demonstrated that sites in the MCRV differ from those elsewhere in the U.S. Southeast, particularly the Green River in Kentucky, with respect to taxa abundance, mortuary activity, feature frequency, and artifact composition.
The next three chapters discuss recent archaeological investigation at sites severely affected by flooding in 2010. Peres, Deter-Wolf, Kelly Ledford, Joey Keasler, Ryan Robinson, and Andrew Wyatt discuss diverse datasets about long-term shellfish harvesting at 40DV7. Radiocarbon dates demonstrate consistent exploitation of nearby gastropod-rich habitats for approximately 2,000 years. The absence of features and the few burials suggest that 40DV7 was a resource procurement site, rather than a setting for domestic or mortuary activity.
Shane Miller, Thaddeus Bissett, Peres, David Anderson, Stephen Carmody, and Deter-Wolf discuss archaeological investigations at 40CH171, a multicomponent, shell-bearing site containing cultural materials ranging in age from the Late Paleoindian through the Late Archaic period. A Bayesian analysis of 23 radiocarbon dates defines three Archaic cultural zones having tightly clustered dates. Although the site does contain shell-bearing deposits, the authors conclude that it was the presence of nearby Fort Payne chert that continually attracted Archaic people to this spot.
Bissett, Carmody, and Miller employ geoarchaeological, paleoethnobotanical, and chronological data to explore the reasons behind the variable presence of shell-bearing deposits at the Barnes site. They propose that, rather than changing preferences for shellfish, the variability of shell-bearing deposits reflects shifting courses of the Cumberland River and changes in the locations of its shell beds.
Dan Morse and Peres revisit the Robinson Shell Mound, where, in the early 1960s, Morse conducted the first modern archaeological investigations of a shell-bearing site in the MCRV. A reassessment of original findings, supplemented by information from recent excavations at sites in the MCRV, clarifies the range of activities conducted at Robinson.
Deter-Wolf and Bissett reassess site stratigraphy, artifact distributions, and radiocarbon dates from the Anderson site. Anderson, the oldest known shell-bearing site in the MCRV that dates to the late Middle Archaic, has yielded some of the earliest evidence for the exchange of marine shell in the Southeast. Most of the data examined by the authors resulted from excavations conducted in the 1980s by highly dedicated avocational archaeologists, underscoring the importance of cooperation between the professional community and the informed public.
Andrew Gillreath-Brown and Deter-Wolf use GIS data to investigate variation in settlement patterns during the Early, Middle, and Late Archaic subperiods. The authors discuss numerous biases and limitations of using site file data collected over five decades. They identify diachronic changes in site frequency, density, and setting and produce an initial model for Archaic settlement in the MCRV that can be evaluated and refined using new analytical techniques as additional information becomes available.
In the concluding chapter, the volume editors (Peres and Deter-Wolf) discuss MCRV sites in reference to the mid-twentieth-century Shell Mound Archaic (SMA) concept, which typically frames the accumulation of shell at Archaic sites in the American Midcontinent as trash deposits attributable to the daily activities of their occupants. Contributors to this book demonstrate that most MCRV Archaic shell-bearing sites do not neatly fit the SMA model and that the model masks important variability in the age, functions, and taphonomy of these sites, and the shellfish species present. Contributing authors emphasize that each shell-bearing site must be examined independently of others to discern both regional patterns and local variations in Archaic lifeways in the MCRV.
This book is a major contribution toward understanding Archaic hunter-gatherer-fisher culture in the American South, with its consideration of datasets generated from archaeology, geomorphology, hydrology, malacology, zooarchaeology, and paleoethnobotany. Specialists in the Archaic Southeast will want to read this book, as will archaeologists studying shell-bearing sites from other areas and eras. The contributors should be congratulated for generating such diverse datasets and analyses and for producing a well-written volume on the results of their efforts!
