Distribution and Context of Worked Crystalline Artifacts From the Middle Cumberland Region of Tennessee

Tracking Mississippian Migrations from the Central Mississippi Valley to the Ridge and Valley with a Unified Absolute Chronology

“…Regardless of the impetus, we propose the possibility that the first departures of populations from the Central Mississippi Valley could have resulted in some of these people initially moving into the MCR during the drought period between AD 1200 and 1275. The presence of Late Stirling / Early Moorehead ceramics at Mound Bottom and elsewhere in the MCR accords with this scenario, as do ceramics from southeast Missouri and the lower Ohio Valley (Moore et al 2016; Moore and Smith 2009; Sharp et al 2020; Smith 2023). As previously noted, the population in the MCR peaked by AD 1275.…”

“…The pottery from the wall-trench structure also compares favorably with that from the platform mounds at the Long Island site where the Middle Cumberland ancestor statue was found. In contrast to East Tennessee, wall-trench structures continued to be used later into the fourteenth century in the MCR (Beahm 2013:252; Moore and Smith 2009:210). The Middle Cumberland–style domestic pottery at the Long Island site suggests that women from that region were there, whereas the relatively late wall-trench structure at Long Island suggests the presence of people, likely men, who still built this type of architecture and did the heavy construction work (Sullivan et al 2022).…”