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REVISITING PLATFORM MOUNDS AND TOWNHOUSES IN THECHEROKEE HEARTLAND: A COLLABORATIVE APPROACH

BENJAMIN A. STEERE

Department of Anthropology, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC, USA

This article describes the development and initial results of theWestern North CarolinaMounds and Towns Project,a collaborative endeavor initiated by the Tribal Historic Preservation Office of the Eastern Band of Cherokee andthe Coweeta Long Term Ecological Research Program at the University of Georgia. The goal of this project is togenerate new information about the distribution of late prehistoric mounds and historic period townhouses inwestern North Carolina. This ongoing research has produced updated location and chronological data for Mis-sissippian period mounds and historic Cherokee townhouses, and led to the discovery of a possible location for theJasper Allen mound. Using these new data, I suggest that David Hally’s model for the territorial size of Mississip-pian polities provides a useful framework for generating new research questions about social and political change inwestern North Carolina. I also posit that the cultural practice of rebuilding townhouses in place and on top of Mis-sissippian period platform mounds, a process that Christopher Rodning describes as “emplacement,” was commonacross western North Carolina. In terms of broader impacts, this project contributes positively to the developmentof indigenous archaeology in the Cherokee heartland.

KEYWORDS: Cherokee Archaeology, Regional Analysis, Indigenous Archaeology, Townhouses, Mounds

Prior to the late nineteenth century, the mountainvalleys of western North Carolina were marked bydozens of platform mounds and townhouses builtby Cherokee and their ancestors (Dickens ;Keel ; Kimball et al. ; Rodning ,; Ward and Davis ). These monumentalstructures are important places on the Cherokeecultural landscape, but most have been damagedby looting, development, and modern agriculture.Additionally, while there has been excellentresearch on individual late prehistoric sites in theCherokee heartland, such as the Coweeta Creeksite (Rodning , ), the Warren Wilsonsite (Dickens , ; Moore ), the Bilt-more Mound (Kimball et al. , ), andthe Garden Creek sites (Dickens ; Keel; Wright , ), there have beenfewer attempts to understand changes in monu-mental architecture and settlement patterns atbroader spatial and temporal scales (althoughreaders should see Dickens [], Moore[], and Rudolph [] for early regionalsyntheses and Ward and Davis [] for an over-view). Important archaeological research has beencarried out in western North Carolina throughcultural resource management projects, but thiswork is often overlooked as gray literature, and

is not incorporated into broader research frame-works (e.g., Riggs and Shumate [] on theKituwah Mound and Benyshek et al. [] on apossible ceremonial Woodland period ditch onthe Qualla Boundary). As a result, basic questionsabout the history of human settlement and thebuilt environment that are fairly well understoodin adjacent regions, such as eastern Tennesseeand northwest Georgia, remain to be answeredfor western North Carolina (see Hally ;King ; Schroedl :–; Sullivan, ).Archaeologists working in western North Caro-

lina and the Eastern Band of Cherokee share acommon concern about the need for an improvedand expanded understanding of the archaeologyof the Cherokee heartland. In recent years, theEastern Band of Cherokee has collaborated witharchaeologists to develop projects aimed at under-standing and preserving archaeological sites in theAppalachian Summit region (Carroll ;Cooper ; Riggs ). This collaboration isrepresentative of a broader movement referred toas indigenous archaeology, which is perhapsmost concisely defined as archaeology done with,by, for, and about indigenous communities (seeCowell-Chapthaphonh et al. ; Croes ;

© Southeastern Archaeological Conference DOI: ./Y. Southeastern Archaeology , Vol. No. , –

Riggs ; Watkins ; Wilcox , ).Working with archaeologists, the Eastern Bandof Cherokee has taken an active role in developingcultural resource management projects and aca-demic research programs. Such projects makebroad contributions to archaeological knowledgewhile also respecting traditional Cherokee beliefsabout the treatment of sacred places, graves, andceremonial objects, and contributing to the preser-vation of Cherokee culture.The Western North Carolina Mounds and

Towns Project, a collaborative archaeologicalresearch project initiated by the Tribal HistoricPreservation Office of the Eastern Band of Chero-kee (EBCI THPO) and the Coweeta Long TermEcological Research Program (LTER) at the Uni-versity of Georgia, is one such effort. Theprimary goal of this ongoing project is to createa GIS map and database documenting all the lateprehistoric mound and townhouse sites in the westernmost counties of North Carolina. Thisresearch is one of only a few attempts to systema-tically map the location of all the archaeologicallyidentified late prehistoric mounds and Cherokeetowns in the Cherokee heartland (see Dickens; Gragson and Bolstad ).This project uses a combination of archival

research, archaeological survey, and communityoutreach to generate new information aboutpoorly understood mound and town sites inwestern North Carolina. Important new findingsfrom this project include the identification of apossible location for the Jasper Allen Mound, sup-porting evidence for the relocation of the WataugaMound described by Bartram (), and refineddates of occupation for the Notley Mound andvillage site (CE). A database and GIS layercontaining spatial and chronological informationfor confirmed and possible Woodland andMississippian period mounds and Cherokee town-houses was constructed, and has been used to yieldnew insight on regional-scale research questions.This article describes the development and initial

results of the Western North Carolina Moundsand Towns Project, focusing on the new infor-mation generated for understanding the nature ofMississippian period platform mounds and his-toric period Cherokee townhouses in the studyarea. I make two observations about the natureof the built environment in the Cherokee heart-land. First, I suggest that the distribution ofMissis-sippian period platform mounds in southwesternNorth Carolina is broadly similar to the patternof platform mound spacing recorded in northern

Georgia. As a result, Hally’s (, ) modelfor the territorial size of Mississippian politiesmay be a useful tool for generating new researchquestions about Mississippian period settlementin the region.Second, I suggest that the cultural practice of

rebuilding townhouses in place and on top of Mis-sissippian period platform mounds, a process thatRodning (:, –) describes as“emplacement,” may have been common acrosssouthwestern North Carolina. Using the new evi-dence marshaled for this project, I argue thateach of the three groups of eighteenth-centuryCherokee towns in southwestern North Carolina,theMiddle, Out, and Valley towns, may have been“anchored” by at least one townhouse constructedon top of a Mississippian period platform mound.From this birds-eye view, it seems the process ofemplacement occurred not only at the scale ofthe individual settlement, but at a broader,regional scale.

MOUNDS AND TOWNHOUSES IN THE CHEROKEE

HEARTLAND

Western North Carolina is the ancestral homelandof the Cherokee people. Today, about percentof the , enrolled members of the EasternBand of Cherokee live on the Qualla Boundary,an approximately , ha holding adjacent tothe Great Smoky Mountains National Park,which includes the town of Cherokee, North Car-olina (North Carolina Department of Adminis-tration ). This roughly km arearepresents a small fraction of the approximately, km territory the Cherokees may havecontrolled in the early s, based on archaeolo-gical evidence, early written accounts, and Chero-kee oral history (Duncan and Riggs :;Finger :; Gragson and Bolstad :).Population estimates for the size of the Cherokeenation in the mid-to-late eighteenth century fallaround , people living in approximately towns in South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolinaand Tennessee (Duncan and Riggs :;Gragson and Bolstad ; Smith ). Themembers of today’s Eastern Band are descendantsof a group of approximately ,Cherokees whosurvived late eighteenth-century wars with Euro-pean and American forces and multiple smallpoxepidemics, and then resisted removal in . Bythe early twentieth century, these survivors hadestablished the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indiansas a federally recognized tribe and sovereign

REVISITING PLATFORM MOUNDS AND TOWNHOUSES IN THE CHEROKEE HEARTLAND

Southeastern Archaeology , Vol. No. , –

nation, with their lands held in trust by the federalgovernment (Duncan and Riggs :–;Finger ).The study area for this project (Figure )

includes the westernmost counties of NorthCarolina, which were home to the Valley,Middle, and Out Towns of the Cherokee in theeighteenth century (Boulware :–; Smith). The counties fall within the SouthernBlue Ridge Province of the Appalachian Moun-tains (Fenneman :), and the terrain isdominated by steep mountains, sharp ridge tops,and narrow valleys. The major river drainages inthe study area, from east to west, are the FrenchBroad, Pigeon, Tuckasegee, Little Tennessee, andHiwassee rivers. This area is generally consideredto be the center of the Cherokee “heartland” (seeGragson and Bolstad :), and it includesthe mother town of Kituwah, which, accordingto oral tradition, is the Cherokee place of origin(Mooney :).Table provides a general chronology for the

late prehistoric and historic periods in the region.In western North Carolina and the surroundingSouthern Appalachian region, mound buildingbegan during the Middle Woodland period,around A.D. (Keel ; Kimball et al.). The best-documented Woodland periodmound sites in the Cherokee heartland includethe Connestee phase Mound No. (HW) atthe Garden Creek site (Keel ) and the Bilt-more Mound (BN), located on thegrounds of the Biltmore Estate (Kimball et al., ). Both of these mounds apparentlyserved as low platforms for ceremonial activitiesand contain artifacts typically associated withMiddle Woodland period ceremonial andexchange systems (Keel ; Kimball et al., ; Wright , ).During the Mississippian period (A.D. –

), indigenous people in western North Caro-lina, following broader cultural and demographictrends in the Southeast, began practicing intensivemaize agriculture and living throughout the year inpermanent, nucleated villages (Dickens ;Rodning and Moore ; Smith ). Thesepractices are seen at sites associated with Pisgahphase ceramics, like Warren Wilson and GardenCreek, and Qualla phase ceramics, such as theNununyi Mound and village site (Greene ;Rodning andMoore ). In nearby eastern Ten-nessee, platform mounds replace burial mounds asthe principal form of monumental architectureduring the Late Woodland to Early Mississippian

transition, and mounds appear to become politicaland economic centers (Hally and Mainfort:; Schroedl :–; Schroedl et al.:–; Sullivan , a; Sullivanand Koerner ).In western North Carolina,Mississippian period

villages with platform mounds appear to havebeen central places on the political, economic,and cultural landscape, but they were not aslarge or elaborate as mound sites in neighboringregions (Hudson :–; Rodning andMoore :–; Sullivan b). Large Mis-sissippian period communities like Etowah,Moundville, and Cahokia contained multiple plat-form mounds, and these sites appear to have beenthe administrative center of settlement systemswith two or more hierarchical levels of politicalorganization (Beck ; Hally ; King; Knight ; Pauketat ). In contrast,Mississippian period central places in westernNorth Carolina contained single platform moundsites that appear to have served as politicalcenters for several surrounding communities.Similar Mississippian polities are well documentedin nearby northern Georgia (Anderson ;Hally , ).By approximately A.D. and into the late

eighteenth century in western North Carolina,townhouses replaced mounds as the primaryform of public architecture (Rodning ,). Townhouses, large public buildingsmeasuring between and m in diameter,were often rebuilt in place over time. Thisprocess gradually formed a low mound andcreated an elevated base for new townhouse con-struction. In some cases, Cherokee communitiesconstructed townhouses on top of existing plat-form mounds built centuries earlier.The Cherokee townhouse at the Coweeta Creek

site (MA) is one of the best preserved andarchaeologically understood examples of thesestructures (Rodning , , ). Thislarge public building had at least six successivestages and was used from the s to the lates (Rodning :). In contrast to platformmounds, which literally and metaphorically elev-ated the chief above other community members,townhouses were public structures which likelyfunctioned as architectural symbols of the Chero-kee town, emphasizing the importance of commu-nity identity over individual leadership (Rodning, ).During the historic period, a sacred fire was kept

burning in Cherokee townhouses, and once a year,

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all the hearths in the village were extinguished andthen ceremonially rekindled from this sacred fire(Mooney :). Based on traditional Chero-kee beliefs, sacred fires continue to burn at places

like Kituwah (Duncan and Riggs :–;Mooney :). Cherokee legends alsosuggest that mounds were the home of theNunnehi, immortal spirit buildings, and that

FIGURE . Study Area, the Eleven Westernmost Counties of North Carolina.

TABLE . CULTURAL CHRONOLOGY FOR WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA, ADAPTED FROM RODNING ().

Period Phase Startdate

Enddate

Hiwassee LittleTennessee

Tuckasegee Pigeon FrenchBroad

Historic Late Qualla A.D.

A.D.

X X X X

Protohistoric Middle Qualla A.D.

A.D.

X X X X

Mississippian Early Qualla A.D.

A.D.

X X X

Undefinedceramic series

A.D.

A.D.

X X X

Late Pisgah A.D.

A.D.

X X X

Early Pisgah A.D.

A.D.

X X X



http://www.maneyonline.com/action/showImage?doi=10.1179/2168472315Y.0000000001&iName=master.img-000.jpg&w=480&h=349

mounds and townhouses are symbolically associ-ated with mountains (Mooney :–;Rodning , ). Thus, in addition toserving as hubs for social and political activities,townhouses created a link between the builtenvironment and sacred aspects of the naturallandscape.Despite the obvious importance of these sites,

and despite a rich history of archaeologicalresearch in the area, we still know relatively littleabout many of the mounds and townhouses inwestern North Carolina. As in other parts of theSoutheast, this is primarily the result of antiquar-ian excavations in the late nineteenth centuryand site destruction in the nineteenth and twenti-eth centuries. A brief review of archaeologicalresearch in the region illuminates this history,and also points to several important and underuti-lized documentary sources.

PREVIOUS ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN

WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA

The earliest archaeological investigations inwestern North Carolina were carried out in thelate s and early s to collect artifacts forthe Valentine Museum in Richmond, Virginia.Mann S. Valentine and his sons, E. E. andB. B. Valentine, directed expeditions inHaywood, Jackson, Cherokee, and Swain coun-ties, sometimes with the help of local residents(Ward and Davis :–). The Valentines andtheir associates “opened” the Peachtree Mound(CE), the Garden Creek Mound No. (HW), the Wells Mound (possibly HW),the Jasper Allen Mound, the Kituwah Mound(SW), the Nununyi Mound (SW), the Bird-town Mound (SW), and the CullowheeMound (JK). These activities were highlydestructive.In the s the Smithsonian Institution

“moundbuilder expedition” identified approxi-mately mounds in western North Carolina(Thomas , ). The results of this workwere published in the annual reports of theBureau of American Ethnology (Thomas ,) and also are mentioned in at least onePeabody Museum report (Putnam ). Thesereports were adequate for their time, but providelittle more than an approximate location for eachrecorded mound and a brief description of the stra-tigraphy and contents of excavated mounds.Many of the mounds recorded in the Smithso-

nian reports were submitted by James Mooney.

While Mooney is most famous for his role as anethnographer, Thomas () credits him withrecording over two-thirds of the mounds inwestern North Carolina. In addition to providingwritten descriptions of mound locations,Mooney mapped the locations of mounds andother important Cherokee sites on a series of anno-tated U.S.G.S. ′ series quad maps. Thesemaps have been stabilized, scanned, and madeavailable online through the Smithsonian Insti-tution’s website (http://siris-archives.si.edu,keyword NAA MS ). In some casesMooney’s annotations include additional infor-mation about mound locations, such as thenames of property owners. I georeferencedMooney’s maps in ArcGIS to create a data layerthat helps clarify some of Thomas’s vague locationdescriptions.In May of , Robert Dewar Wainwright, a

retired captain of the United States MarineCorps and amateur archaeologist, carried outsurface collections and excavations at severalmound and village sites in western North Caro-lina, including the Donnaha site (YD), the Cul-lowhee Mound, the Andrews Mound, and theKituwah Mound (Wainwright , a,b). Wainwright published a written accountof his travels, “A Summer’s ArchaeologicalResearch,” in an obscure journal, The Archaeolo-gical Bulletin. Wainwright’s account has onlyrecently received scholarly attention, and it pro-vides useful details about the Cullowhee,Andrews, and Kituwah mounds (see Steere et al.).The next excavations in western North Carolina

were carried out in Haywood County by theMuseum of the American Indian/Heye Foundation(Heye ). In , George Heye directed exca-vations at the Garden Creek sites (HW, , ,and ) near Canton, North Carolina, and alsoexcavated a probable Woodland period moundon the Singleton property (HW) near Bethel,North Carolina (Heye ).In , Charles O. Turbyfill, a Waynesville,

North Carolina native who assisted George Heyewith logistics in western North Carolina, comple-tely excavated the Notley Mound (CE) (seeWallace [:–] for a colorful andcandid interview with Turbyfill in theNew Yorker magazine). According to UnitedStates Army surveyors who mapped the NotlaRiver valley just prior to Cherokee removal in, the mound once stood approximately mtall (United States Army ). Unfortunately,

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http://siris-archives.si.edu





Turbyfill devotes only one paragraph to the exca-vation of the Notley Mound in a short paper onfile at the National Museum of the AmericanIndian (Turbyfill ).In and , the Smithsonian Institution,

in conjunction with the Civil Works Adminis-tration, carried out extensive excavations at thePeachtree Mound (CE) near Murphy, NorthCarolina. The Peachtree Mound was completelyexcavated, and Setzler and Jennings (:),using the culture history terminology of the day,concluded that the site “is a component in whichboth Woodland and Mississippi traits occursimultaneously.”In the late s, Hiram S. Wilburn, a surveyor

and historian for the National Park Service,mapped and photographed the CullowheeMound (JK), the Garden Creek site(HW), the Kituwah Mound (SW and ),the Nikwasi Mound (MA), the NununyiMound (SW), and the Watauga Mound(MA) (archives on file at the University ofNorth Carolina Research Laboratories of Archae-ology and the Great Smoky Mountains NationalPark Visitors Center). Wilburn’s photographs,maps, and notes provide a valuable snapshot ofthese mound sites decades before they receivedattention from professional archaeologists.In the early s the University of North Car-

olina carried out extensive pedestrian surveys inwestern North Carolina under the umbrella ofthe Cherokee Project. The goal of the CherokeeProject was to understand the development ofCherokee culture through a study of the archaeo-logical record in western North Carolina(Dickens ; Keel , ). By the s,these surveys and other fieldwork resulted in thedocumentation over , archaeological sites inwestern North Carolina (Keel :; Wardand Davis :). The results of the CherokeeProject were published in theses, dissertations,books, and articles that became standard referencetexts and created the framework for our currentunderstanding of the archaeology of westernNorth Carolina (see Dickens ; Egloff ;Holden ; Keel ).More recent research on mounds in western

North Carolina has yielded new insight on individ-ual sites and improved our understanding of thearchaeology of the region. Survey and testing atthe Nununyi, Birdtown, and Kituwah moundson the Qualla boundary suggest that the moundsites were occupied during the Early to MiddleQualla phases (Greene , ) Rodning’s

analyses of materials and records from theCoweeta Creek site have improved our under-standing of Cherokee townhouses and domesticarchitecture (, ), and his analyses ofpottery from Coweeta Creek have refined thechronology for the Qualla ceramic series ().Ongoing research at the Spikebuck Mound andtown site byWestern Carolina University promisesto shed new light on the ceramic chronology in theHiwassee river drainage (Eastman ; Stout). Research programs at the BiltmoreMound (Kimball et al. , ) and theGarden Creek site (Wright , ) are gener-ating new data for understanding western NorthCarolina’s place in the broader Hopewell Inter-action Sphere during the Middle Woodlandperiod (ca. A.D. –).

METHODS AND INITIAL RESULTS

In addition to the historical problems of sitedestruction, a major barrier to understanding theprehistoric cultural landscape of western NorthCarolina is the lack of a concerted effort tocompile all existing information about moundand townhouse sites in a single location. This is ageneral problem in archaeological research, andis hardly unique to western North Carolina (seeAnderson and Sassaman :). While thestate site file contains an excellent database ofarchaeological sites and current site reports forthe state, older records and finer scale data areharder to find. Archival data and archaeologicalrecords and collections are scattered across univer-sities, state offices, and museums, and possiblemounds identified decades ago have not beenrevisited. Many historical references to Cherokeetownhouses have not been cross-checked andconfirmed with archaeological evidence.The first step in this project was to examine all

available archival sources for information aboutmounds and town sites in western North Carolinacompile this information into a single databasecontaining accurate location data, archaeologicaland historical documentation, and preservationstatus for all the prehistoric and historic Cherokeemound and town sites in western North Carolina.This was completed in the summer of , withthe aid of archaeologists and historians fromacross the state. The database and GIS from thisproject are on file with the EBCI THPO and theCoweeta LTER.Archival research suggested that while there

were only known archaeological sites



containing mounds or townhouses officiallyrecorded on state site forms, there may havebeen as many as mound and townhouse sitesin the study area (Steere ). This finding con-trasts with the prevailing notion that there wererelatively few mound sites in the region, and thatfewer still could be identified archaeologically.Following this archival research, archaeological

fieldwork was carried out in the winter of and spring of . Initial reconnaissancesurveys were completed at of the sites todetermine which of the newly identified possiblemound sites contained archaeological evidencefor mound construction (the remaining sites wereinaccessible; most were on private property, anda few were inundated by lakes). Mapping andshovel test surveys were completed at of the locations with the goal of defining unknownor poorly understood site boundaries and generat-ing ceramic samples for dating.During the reconnaissance survey, our research

team visited possible mound sites, oftenaccompanied by local residents, archaeologists,and historians. Site boundaries were defined bythe presence of artifacts, either recovered fromthe surface in areas appropriate for pedestriansurvey, or from subsurface contexts in shoveltests. In accordance with the research designdeveloped with the EBCI THPO, no invasivesubsurface testing took place directly on knownor possible mounds. Older ceramic collectionsand new, systematic artifact collections wereanalyzed to assign approximate dates of occu-pation to sites.

The archaeological survey completed for thisproject revealed that of the archaeologicalsites identified through archival research lackedreliable archaeological or historical evidence forWoodland or Mississippian period mounds orCherokee townhouses. Of the remaining sites, can be identified conclusively as containingWoodland or Mississippian period mounds orCherokee townhouses. An additional sites rep-resent possible mound and/or townhouselocations, but further archival and archaeologicalresearch will be necessary to verify their status.The discussion that follows provides a brief

description of archaeologically confirmedMississippian period platform mound and Cher-okee townhouse locations in the study area.Table provides summary information forthese sites. The project also produced new infor-mation about archaeologically confirmedWoodland period mounds, but they are not

discussed here. Interested readers can refer to atechnical report (Steere ) and a forthcomingbook chapter (Steere ) for details on theother confirmed and possible mound sites ident-ified by this project.

MISSISSIPPIAN PERIOD MOUNDS AND CHEROKEE

TOWNHOUSES IN WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA

The archaeological and historical data gatheredfor this study suggest that at least seven moundsin the study area areMississippian period platformmounds. These platforms mounds include: thePeachtree (CE) and Notley (CE) moundsin the Hiwassee River drainage, the NikwasiMound (MA) on the Little Tennessee River,the Jasper Allen Mound (in the vicinity of JK), Kituwah Mound (SW), and theNununyi Mound (SW) in the Oconalufteeand Tuckasegee drainages, Garden CreekMound (HW) in the Pigeon River drainage,and the Swannanoa Mound (no site designation)in the French Broad River drainage near Asheville.Historic records suggest that there are dozens of

archaeologically unrecorded Cherokee town-houses in western North Carolina, each onemarking the location of the many named Middle,Valley, and Out Towns (Duncan and Riggs). At present, there are archaeologicallydocumented Cherokee townhouses in the studyarea. These include four townhouses that appearto have been constructed on top of earlier, Missis-sippian period platform mounds: the PeachtreeMound, the Nikwasi Mound, the KituwahMound, and the Nununyi Mound. Based on ourcurrent understanding of available archaeologicalevidence, the remaining seven townhousesappear to have been constructed during the six-teenth century or later, and do not have clear evi-dence of an underlying platform mound.However, it should be noted that additionalarchaeological research may reveal evidence forearlier construction stages at some of these sites.This group includes the Andrews Mound(CE) on the Valley River, the SpikebuckMound (CY) on the Hiwassee River, the Cul-lowhee Mound (JK) in the Tuckasegee Riverdrainage, the Cowee (MA), Watauga(MA), and Coweeta Creek (MA)mounds along the Little Tennessee River, and theBirdtown Mound (SW) on the OconalufteeRiver. Archaeological and historical evidence foreach of the mounds and townhouses is summar-ized below.

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TABLE . SUMMARY INFORMATION FOR SITES DISCUSSED IN TEXT.

Name State sitenumber

Artifacts andarchitectural features

L (m) W (m) H (m) Ceramicphases

References

AndrewsMound

CE Large moundgenerally consideredto have represented aCherokee townhouse.Qualla ceramics andglass trade beadsfound near mound

. . . Qualla Coe (),Wainwright(a:)

Birdtown SW Recovered artifactsinclude glass beads,Qualla and Pisgahphase ceramics(mostly Qualla), and arazor. This is likely aCherokee townhouse

. . . Qualla Greene(:),Thomas(:),Ward (:)

Cowee MA Historically recordedCherokee townhouse

. . . Qualla Bartram ()

CoweetaCreek

MA At least six stages ofCherokee townhouseconstruction. Early,Middle, and LateQualla ceramics

. . . Qualla Rodning ()

Cullowhee JK Probable townhousemound leveled in. Artifactsrecovered duringdestruction includeQualla phase ceramics

Qualla Keel ()

GardenCreekMound

HW Stone mantle at baseof mound. Likelyrepresents anearthlodge replacedby platform mound

. . . Pisgah,someQualla

Dickens(:–),Keel (:–)

Jasper Allen JK Multiple fill zones andlayers of “burnedclay,” pottery,charcoal, ash, burialwith conch shell andhuman head effigybottle

. . . Pisgah,someQualla

Osborne (),Thomas(:)

Kituwah SW Cherokee townhouseidentified withgeophysical survey;cedar posts, beads,pottery, and Quallaphase ceramicsrecovered byValentines

. . . Qualla,Pisgah

Riggs andShumate(:–),Thomas(:)

Continued



TABLE . CONTINUED.




References

Nikwasi MA Historically recordedCherokee townhousebuilt atopMississippian periodplatform mound

. . . Qualla,Pisgah

Tormey ()

Notley CE Large stone structurein center of mound,overlain bysubsequentconstruction stage.Pisgah and Quallaphase ceramicsrecovered frommound fill. Turbyfillrecords burials,complete ceramicvessels, pipes, copperear ornaments, and aconch shell containingthe remains of aninfant

. . . Qualla,Pisgah,Lamar,Etowah

Steere(:–),Turbyfill ()

Nununyi SW Mostly Qualla andsome Pisgah phaseceramics recovered byValentines. Stonemantle at base ofmound. Burnedstructure and burialsin mound

. . . Qualla,Pisgah

Dickens(:),Greene(:–),Thomas(:)

Peachtree CE Three mound stages: aprimary stageincluding a stone andwood structure(possibly an earthlodge), overlain withtwo subsequentconstruction stages.Pisgah and Quallaphase ceramics inmound fill

. . . Qualla,Pisgah

Setzler andJennings(:)

Spikebuck CY Qualla phase ceramicsand European tradegoods recovered inexcavations nearmound

. . . Qualla Eastman (),Stout (),Thomas(:)

Swanannoa Unassigned Piled stone core ormantle covered incharcoal and darkwill. Projectile pointsnear base

. . . Unknown Thomas(:)

Continued

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THE PEACHTREE MOUND (CE)According to Setzler and Jennings (:–

), the Peachtree Mound contained a primarymound with a rectangular structure made ofstones covered by at least two later constructionepisodes. The mound measured . m ( ft)high and -×-m (-×- ft) at its basewhen it was excavated in the early s (Setzlerand Jennings :). Dickens (:–)suggests that the stone structure at Peachtree wassimilar to the stone mantle found in the Pisgahphase Garden Creek Mound , and may have rep-resented the remains of an earthlodge. Dickensalso notes that while only a few Pisgah phasesherds can be identified in the plates of Setzlerand Jennings report, most of the ceramic collec-tions associated with the mound excavations canbe assigned to the Dallas and Pisgah phases.The Peachtree Mound served as a platform for

the townhouse at Hiwassee, one of the mostimportant eighteenth-century Cherokee ValleyTowns (Duncan and Riggs :; Riggs:). While the Smithsonian excavation atPeachtree did not produce a clear map of the his-toric Cherokee townhouse, a profile drawing ofthe mound showing several distinct floors abovethe “primary mound” and the quantity of Euro-pean trade goods discovered in the moundsuggests the presence of a Cherokee townhouse(Setzler and Jennings :, plates and ).

THE NOTLEY MOUND (CE)According the Turbyfill’s () account, the

Notley Mound was . m ( ft) high andmeasured -×- m (-×- ft) at the basewhen he and a small crew completely excavatedit. Like the Peachtree and Garden Creek mounds,the Notley Mound contained a square structuremade of stones, as well as artifact and burialassociations consistent with Mississippian periodconstruction and use, including Pisgah phase jarswhich were eventually curated at the HeyeMuseum (Keel ).

In , our survey team carried out topo-graphic mapping and a limited shovel test surveyin the habitation area surrounding the NotleyMound. A low mound remnant measuring-×-m at the base and approximately mhigh is still present at CE, despite the longhistory of excavation and landscape modificationat the site. Landowners indicate that Turbyfilland his crew piled the mound fill from their exca-vation back in the original location of the mound,and that this new “mound”was leveled with a bull-dozer in the s. Shovel tests excavated near themound remnant reveal a complex stratigraphythat appears to include mound fill and middenwhich have been excavated, redeposited, andplowed. This fill is underlain by more uniformstrata which may contain intact cultural features(Steere :–). A preliminary analysis ofthe ceramics recovered from the shoveltests suggests that CE contains Late Wood-land, Early Mississippian, Middle Mississippian,and Late Mississippian occupations representedby Napier, Etowah, Pisgah, Savannah, Lamar,and Qualla phase ceramics.

THE NIKWASI MOUND (MA)The Nikwasi Mound, located in downtown

Franklin, North Carolina, on the west side of theLittle Tennessee River, marks the site of theeighteenth-century Cherokee town of Nikwasi(Dickens ; McRae ). The townhouseon top of the mound was used by Col. JamesGrant as a field hospital during his campaignagainst the Middle Towns (McRae :).In the late nineteenth century, Thomas

(:) described the Nikwasi Mound as“one of the largest and best preserved in the Stateand on the site of the Old Nikwasi (Nequassee)settlement.” In , Mooney sought permissionto excavate the mound but was denied access,and the mound was not excavated by the Smithso-nian (McRae :). Thus, unlike most of thelarge mounds in western North Carolina,Nikwasi has never been the subject of antiquarian

TABLE . CONTINUED.




References

Watauga MA Historically recordedCherokee townhouse.Qualla phase ceramics

. . . Qualla Bartram (),Benyshek(), Steere(:–)



or professional excavations. There is no indicationthat representatives of the Valentine Museum duginto the mound. The only professional excavationknown to have taken place at Nikwasi is a single-×- ft test pit excavated by UNC archaeologistsin to investigate damage caused by the place-ment of a drainage ditch north of the mound(Davis et al. :).A ground penetrating radar survey of the mound

summit by Western Carolina University geologistBlair Tormey suggests that the lower portion ofthe mound is buried in – m of floodplain sedi-ment and fill (Tormey ). Tormey’s studyalso revealed evidence for multiple constructionstages and a dense cluster of objects near thesurface of the mound that may represent a town-house (Tormey :–). These findingssupport the interpretation of Nikwasi as amound originally constructed during the Missis-sippian period, and then used as the base for anhistoric Cherokee townhouse.

THE JASPER ALLEN MOUND

Osborne completely excavated the Jasper AllenMound for the Valentine Museum in December,, and until now, its location has not beenknown. In a letter to B. B. Valentine describingthe mound exploration, Osborne writes that themound is located on “Scots Creek miles northof Webster,” on the farm of Jasper Allen.Thomas (:) places the mound “onScott’s Creek, between the railroad and thecreek, about miles north of Sylva.”Osborne’s narrative includes general infor-

mation about the characteristics and contents ofthe mound. He states that he and a crew of fiveworkers excavated a trench ft (. m) longand – ft (.– m) deep, ft (. m) from thecenter of the mound, probably on the southeastside of the mound. They encountered “differentlayers of earth and clays, and some burnt clay aswe found in the McCombs Mound,” and alsopottery, charcoal, ash, and decayed bone(Osborne ). Several days into their exca-vation, Osborne and his crew encountered aburial containing a conch shell and a paintedeffigy bottle with images of four human heads.The human head effigy bottle recovered from the

mound (curated at the Research Laboratories ofArchaeology at the University of North Carolina)bears a strong resemblance to similar bottlesrecovered from Dallas phase contexts in easternTennessee (e.g., Polhemus :, figure.). It is nearly identical to similar vessels

found in association with Level H burials inMound A at Toqua and with burials in theDallas Mound (Koerner et al. :–;Lewis et al. ). Koerner et al. extrapolate theuse dates for Level H of the Toqua Mound as A.D. – (:), and AMS dates forthe Dallas phase in eastern Tennessee fall in thelate fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries (Sulli-van ).A human effigy head bottle from the Bell Field

site (MU) on the Coosawattee River in north-west Georgia is also nearly identical to the vesselfrom the Jasper Allen Mound and the Dallasphase effigy vessel illustrated in Polhemus’sreport (:, figure .). Hally ()dates the pottery collection from the mound atBell Field to the late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century Savannah phase. In sum, the effigy bottleand other ceramic artifacts in the Jasper Allen col-lection suggest a Pisgah or Qualla phase occu-pation, perhaps dating to the late fourteenth toearly fifteenth centuries (see Davis et al. :,).Records of land sales on file at the Jackson

County register of deeds indicate that between and , D. J. (“Jasper”) Allen boughtand sold hundreds of acres of land on Scott’sCreek. Most of his holdings appear to have beensituated north and east of Sylva and west andsouth of the confluence of Scott’s Creek andCarson’s Branch. The descriptions provided byOsborne and Mooney and the available landrecords indicate that Jasper Allen’s farm waslocated on the north side of Scott’s Creek nearthe confluence with Allen’s Branch. Descendantsof Jasper Allen interviewed by the principal inves-tigator confirmed this location. Archaeologicalsurvey on the north bank of Scott’s Creek revealedthat most of the terrain in the probable location ofthe mound has been cut, filled, and graded forcommercial development. A very small (ca.-×- m) site with Qualla phase and other uni-dentified grit-tempered ceramics (JK) wasidentified in this location during the survey(Steere :). Site JK may represent aportion of a much larger occupation late prehisto-ric occupation area associated with the JasperAllen Mound.

THE KITUWAH MOUND

The Kituwah Mound is located on the west sideof the Tuckasegee River, approximately . kmwest of the confluence with the OconalufteeRiver. According to Cherokee oral tradition, the

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mound marks the center of the first Cherokeevillage, and the ancestral home of the Cherokeepeople (Duncan and Riggs :–). Decadesof plowing have reduced the mound’s height toapproximately . m (Riggs and Shumate:). Records from the Valentine excavationsindicate the mound was . m tall in the s.Hiram Wilburn mapped and photographed theKituwah Mound in , and at that time themound was . m high, with a diameter ofapproximately m.According to Thomas (:), representa-

tives of the Valentine Museum dug into Kituwahin the s. A series of letters written in between historian Barbara Creel of Bryson Cityand Virginia Gee of the Valentine Museum indi-cates that the Valentine excavation uncovered ared cedar post and four graves, interred withtheir heads pointed toward the post. The Valen-tines removed these burials, along with beads,pottery, pipes, and other materials (Valentineet al. ).Archaeological survey and testing conducted at

Kituwah Mound and the surrounding villagemake it one of the better understood mounds inwestern North Carolina (Riggs and Shumate). In , a shovel test survey defined thelimits of the site and identified archaeological com-ponents, and a geophysical survey refinedour understanding of the site structure and thenature of the mound (Riggs and Shumate ).There is evidence for Early Archaic through his-toric period occupation at the site. The geophysi-cal survey reveals that despite decades ofplowing, there is still evidence for a ca. m diam-eter townhouse with an intact central hearth at thebase of the mound, and a fourteenth- toeighteenth-century Qualla phase plaza andvillage near the mound (Riggs and Shumate:–). According to Riggs and Shumate(:), “the townhouse stage or stages indi-cated by gradiometry likely represents a templedestroyed at the midpoint of the uselife of themound, probably in the fifteenth or sixteenthcentury.”

THE NUNUNYI MOUND

This mound is located on the east bank of theOconaluftee River, just below its confluence withthe Raven Fork River. Bartram (:)referred to the site as Nuanha during his visit to the region. The site appears on the Hunter map and the Kitchin map as Newni(Ward :). Historical documents suggest the

town was largely abandoned after (Greene:).Edward Valentine dug three trenches into the

Nununyi Mound in , and discovered theburned floor of a structure covering graves(Greene :). In their usual fashion, theValentines damaged the mound, but seem tohave left the village area intact. Dickens(:) examined the field records and artifactsfrom the Valentine expedition at the NununyiMound, and suggested that at least one stage ofthe mound was built during the Mississippianperiod. According to Dickens (:), theValentines encountered a pile of stones at the baseof the mound (superficially similar to the one atthe Peachtree Mound). Dickens also notes that of the ceramic sherds collected byEdward Valentine from the Nununyi Moundmay date to the Pisgah phase (Dickens :).This figure is noteworthy, although it should beremembered that the Valentines’ collections werenot systematic, and the high percentage of Pisgahphase sherds may represent collector bias. Thepresence of Pisgah phase ceramics and the stonecore suggest that mound was first constructedduring the Mississippian period.Wilburn mapped and photographed the

Nununyi Mound in . He indicates that themound was ft (. m) in diameter and – ft (.–. m) tall at the time. In , whenconstruction began for the “Cherokee Wonder-land” amusement park, the village area east ofthe mound was badly damaged by grading andthe excavation of a canal. In , a drainageditch was dug just east of the mound. Archaeolo-gists from the University of North Carolina col-lected artifacts from this ditch and recorded thestratigraphy (Ward :).In , Lance Greene carried out archaeologi-

cal testing on the . acre Crowe property southand east of the mound. Greene (:–) col-lected artifacts from a garden plot just south of thebase of the mound, dug shovel tests at m inter-vals over the entire property, except the mound,and excavated several -×- m square test units.He concluded that the heaviest occupation of theCrowe property dated to what he defined at thetime as the “early Qualla phase (A.D. –).”

GARDEN CREEK MOUND The Mississippian period mound at the Garden

Creek site is perhaps the best-documentedexample of a Pisgah phase mound in western



North Carolina. The mound measured approxi-mately m east-west and m north-south,with a height of m when it was excavated inthe s (Dickens :). In his reconstructionof the mound construction sequence, Dickens(:–) argues that the mound began astwo earth lodges placed side-by-side and con-nected by entry trenches, with an adjacent rec-tangular structure. After the earth lodges beganto deteriorate, they were surrounded by a layerof boulders. The boulders were then coveredwith midden soil from the village, almost to thetops of the earth lodges. It appears that construc-tion of a building began on this surface but col-lapsed, and more fill was brought in to create alevel platform. Two structures, a palisade, andburials were placed on this surface. Qualla cer-amics were found around the mound during exca-vations. Dickens (:) suggests that a Quallaphase townhouse, destroyed by plowing, mayhave been built above this Pisgah phase surface,but this speculation has never been confirmed.

THE SWANNANOA MOUND

The SwannanoaMound was recorded and exca-vated in the late s by archaeologist J.W.Emmert (Thomas :), but the site hasnever been relocated. James Mooney places thismound on the north bank of the SwannanoaRiver, approximately . km southeast of Ashe-ville on the U.S.G.S. ’ series Ashevillequad map. This area has been heavily modifiedby grading for residential and commercialdevelopment.Thomas (:) indicates that the mound

measured ft (. m) in diameter and ft(. m) high, and was located less than mfrom the river. Emmert apparently excavated atrench into the mound, revealing a core of piledstone, about ft (. m) in diameter and ft(. m) high. The stone pile was covered in char-coal and charred wood and then covered in darkfill. There is no other discussion of stratigraphy,suggesting the dark fill represents a single buildingepisode. Thomas claims the piled stone was notplaced in any particular order. No graves werereported, and a few projectile points were collectedfrom the trench.Based on Thomas’s description of a piled stone

core at the base of the mound, Dickens(:–) suggested that the SwannanoaMound may have been constructed during theMississippian period. The Swannanoa Moundhas never been relocated; the late nineteenth- and

early twentieth-century records from the Bureauof American Ethnology provide the only historicaland archaeological documentation for thismound.

THE ANDREWS MOUND

This large mound was located on the east bankof the Valley River in Andrews, North Carolina.A National Historic Landmark applicationauthored by Joffre Coe, on file at the North Caro-lina Office of State Archaeology, indicates that themound was mostly intact in . An inn was con-structed on top of the mound in the first half of thenineteenth century. This construction damaged themound but probably prevented it from being com-pletely demolished. Coe () suggested that themound represented a Cherokee townhouse con-structed and used from approximately A.D.–. During a visit to the site in ,R. D. Wainwright reported finding glass tradebeads, lithics, and pottery in a field near themound (Steere et al. :). He estimated thatthe mound measured . ft (. m) long by. ft (. m) wide and ft (. m) high,and suggested that the mound was . m tallerbefore it was leveled for the construction of theinn (Steere et al. :). The site was listed onthe National Register of Historic Places in ,but the mound was bulldozed by the landownerin to build a shopping center.

THE SPIKEBUCK MOUND

Located in Hayesville, near the confluence ofTown Creek and the Hiwassee River, this moundis thought to represent the remains of the town-house for the eighteenth-century Cherokee Valleytown of Quanassee, a prominent settlement witha British factorage (Duncan and Riggs:–). Thomas (:) recordedthe site as, “a large mound on McClure farm,near Hayesville, on southwest bank of HiwasseeRiver,” but it was not excavated by the Smithso-nian. Today the mound measures approximately m in diameter and . m in height.The Spikebuck Mound and the associated Cher-

okee town have been the focus of professionalarchaeological research since the s. WesternCarolina University conducted small-scale exca-vations at the site from to , and againunder the direction of Anne Rogers, Jane Brown,and Jane Eastman (Eastman ; Ward andDavis :). The village site appears to havebeen occupied from the sixteenth to the eighteenthcentury, based on the appearance of Middle to

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Late Qualla ceramics and European trade goods(Stout ).

THE CULLOWHEE OR ROGERS MOUND

This mound was located on the west side of theTuckasegee River, on the campus of Western Car-olina University. Thomas (:), citingMooney as the reporter, describes JK as a“mound on the east side of Cullowhee River, justabove its junction with the Tuckasegee,” and indi-cates that the mound was excavated by the Valen-tines. Mooney accurately places the mound in itsknown location on his annotated U.S.G.S.′ series Cowee quad map. In an “account ofthe opening of the Jasper Allen Mound,”addressed to B. B. Valentine and dated December, , A. J. Osborne provides a brief descrip-tion of the exploration of Cullowhee Mound,and indicates that he and his crew found “two orthree pots” in the mound.A few photographs and maps were made of

JK prior to its destruction in . Wilburnmapped and photographed the mound in ,and indicated that it was only “ foot high.” In aone-page report entitled, “Destruction of theMound at Cullowhee, N.C.,” on file at WesternCarolina University, Keel () indicates thatthe mound was destroyed to build recreationalgrounds south of the mound. Features containingpottery and bone were exposed as the moundwas leveled. The Research Laboratories of Archae-ology of the University of North Carolina main-tain ceramics from the Valentine excavation anda small surface collection that Keel salvaged froma pit at the bottom of the mound during a sitevisit after the mound was destroyed. These collec-tions primarily contain Qualla phase ceramics(Davis et al. :). The low height of themound and presence of Qualla ceramics suggestit was a Cherokee townhouse.

THE COWEE MOUND

Cowee was a Cherokee town famously docu-mented by William Bartram during his visit toNorth Carolina in . According to Bartram,an artificial mound at Cowee served as a platformfor a townhouse. Bartram (:) writes, “thecouncil or town-house is a large rotunda, capableof accommodating several hundred people; itstands on the top of an ancient artificial mountof earth, of about twenty feet perpendicular, andthe rotunda on the top of it being above thirtyfeet more, gives the whole fabric an elevation ofabout sixty feet from the common surface of the

ground.” The Cowee Mound is located on top ofa prominent hill overlooking the Little TennesseeRiver, which helps account for Bartram’s descrip-tion of the townhouse’s height.Hiram Wilburn visited the Cowee Mound in

and produced a map and two photographsof the site. He indicates that the mound measured ft (. m) in diameter and ft (. m) highat the time. Based on Bartram’s description andWilburn’s measurements, it seems likely that themound at Cowee represents a Cherokee town-house with several construction stages, andperhaps also the remains of a Mississippianperiod platform mound.

THE WATAUGA MOUND

A low townhouse mound marks the site of theCherokee town of Watauga, a settlement visitedby Bartram during his travels through westernNorth Carolina in (Bartram :–). For decades, MA was considered to bethe location of the Watauga Mound. Accordingto a North Carolina Archaeological Survey Formdated to , MA, located on the west sideof the Little Tennessee River south of Porter’sDam, was reported by a local resident to havebeen excavated by the Smithsonian “forty ormore years ago.” The site form places theWatauga Mound on a low ridge overlooking theriver and characterizes the mound as “wellflattened,” and “ feet in diameter.”Cultural resource management surveys suggest

that MA is a more likely location for theWatauga Mound. This site is also located on ahill on the west side of the Little TennesseeRiver, but lies north and west of MA. Likethe Cowee Mound, which is located on a naturaltopographic rise, the townhouse at Wataugawould have been elevated well above the sur-rounding floodplain.In a survey of a possible site for a new

school in the Iotla community, Joy (:)noted that local residents have long known of amound at MA, and that the location of thesite more closely matches descriptions in historicmaps. Joy and her crew identified a possible town-house mound at MA and performed shoveltesting at m intervals over the . ha projectarea north and west of MA. According toJoy (:), “of these shovel tests, (.percent) yielded prehistoric ceramics and lithicsthat are indicative of an historic (A.D. –) Cherokee village. Artifacts are predomi-nately Qualla ceramics.” Such an assemblage



would be consistent with a village area associatedwith the mound.While surveying a nearby property in ,

archaeologist Tasha Benyshek also identified thepossible mound at MA (Benyshek ). In, Benyshek and a team of volunteers made atopographic map of the mound and carried outa limited program of systematic shovel testing ona m grid around the mound. A total of shovel tests were excavated. Benyshek’s map indi-cates that the mound is currently . m in heightand m in diameter. Her initial survey effortsproduced positive shovel tests in a roughly m radius around the north, east, and westsides of the mound.Benyshek’s fieldwork revealed that the area in

the immediate vicinity of the mound has beendeeply plowed. Ceramics recovered near themound were primarily very small body sherds,and in one shovel test the plow zone was cmdeep (Tasha Benyshek, personal communication). The only clearly diagnostic sherds recov-ered included one Pisgah style rim sherd and afew complicated stamped body sherds that likelydate to the Qualla period.In , our research team re-established Beny-

shek’s grid. We excavated additional shoveltests on a systematic m grid east and west ofthe mound. Forty-one of shovel tests excavatedin the site area during the survey produced prehis-toric artifacts. As in the case of Benyshek’s survey,the density of artifacts recovered from shovel testsaround the mound was low but consistent. SmallQualla phase body sherds were the mostcommon artifact type recovered, consistent withthe pattern observed by Benyshek during hersurvey (Steere :–).

THE COWEETA CREEK MOUND

The Coweeta Creek site is located on the westbank of the Little Tennessee River, south ofHickory Knoll Creek. The mound at theCoweeta Creek site represents at least six succes-sive stages of a large Cherokee townhouse datingfrom the s to the early s (Rodning:). The site was extensively excavated bythe University of North Carolina from to as part of the Cherokee Project (Rodning:). The low mound was the focal point ofa townhouse and plaza complex surrounded bydomestic structures (Rodning , ).Rodning has analyzed and interpreted the cer-amics (), architecture and community plan(, ; Sullivan and Rodning , ),

and graves (Rodning and Moore ) from thesite, making it one of the best understood and pub-licized sites in western North Carolina.

THE BIRDTOWN MOUND

This mound (SW) and its associated villagearea (SW) are located on the north side ofthe Oconaluftee River near the confluence withGoose Creek, in the Nick Bottom floodplain. Thesite was excavated by the Valentines, who notedthat the mound was -×- ft (.-×-. m)in diameter and ft (. m) high at the time oftheir dig (Greene :). Thomas (:)notes that the mound was “nearly obliterated” bythe Valentines. The Valentine excavation pro-duced glass beads, a razor, stone and clay artifacts,and five graves (Ward :). This supports theinterpretation of the mound as a Cherokeetownhouse.In , Lance Greene carried out a systematic

surface collection and excavated three -×- msquare test units just south of the BirdtownMound. The surface collections primarily pro-duced Qualla series ceramics (Greene ).While Pisgah and Connestee series ceramics havebeen found at the site, it appears that the Quallaoccupation was the most substantial (Greene:; Ward :). Despite the history ofprevious excavations and landscape modificationat Birdtown Mound, investigations indicate thatmuch of the mound and village site are stillintact (Epenshade ; Green ).Four additional locations in western North Car-

olina contain possible archaeological evidence fortownhouses. There are unconfirmed accounts of alooted mound at the site of the Western NorthCarolina Regional Airport in Andrews, NorthCarolina (Steere et al. :). James Mooneyreported possible mound sites on SweetwaterCreek, in Robbinsville, North Carolina, and neara train depot in Bryson City, North Carolina,both of which may have represented townhouses(Thomas :, ). Finally, a cursory refer-ence in a Valentine Museum artifact cataloguesuggests that agents of the museum may haveexcavated a mound or townhouse in the generalvicinity of the eighteenth-century Cherokee townof Stecoe (JK) near Whittier, North Carolina(Valentine et al. ).

DISCUSSION

Given the preliminary nature of this study and thelack of good chronological information for many

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of the mound sites, few archaeological interpret-ations will be offered here. The primary aim ofthis study is to organize, synthesize, and reportold and new information and lay the groundworkfor future research. Archaeological componentshave only been assigned to the confirmedmounds and townhouses, and in some casesthese designations are tentative and based onlimited data (e.g., reports from antiquarian exca-vations). However, a few key points merit discus-sion, even at this early stage of the project.As Figure shows, platform mounds that

appear to date to the Mississippian period wereevenly distributed across the study area in fourspatial groupings, with one or two mound siteseach in the Pigeon, Tuckaseegee, Little Tennessee,and Hiwassee River drainages. One mound groupmay be represented by the Pisgah phase mound atGarden Creek (and perhaps the poorly understoodSwannanoa Mound). A second may be rep-resented by the Nununyi, Kituwah, and JasperAllen mounds in the Oconluftee and Tuckaseegeedrainages. The Nikwasi Mound and the DillardMound in Dillard, Georgia (see Elliot ),located on the Little Tennessee River, are kmapart, and may represent a third group. Finally,the Peachtree and Notley mounds, located ontributaries of the Hiwassee River, are located km apart and could represent a fourth group.This distribution is consistent with very general

expectations for Mississippian period settlementpatterns and is broadly similar to the pattern ofmound placement in nearby northern Georgia(see Anderson ; Hally , ; Smith, ). Given this pattern of distribution,Hally’s (, ) model for territorial size ofMississippian polities may serve as a useful frame-work for understanding political and social organ-ization in the region. This model, developed innorthern Georgia, has been applied fruitfully else-where to improve our understanding of theMissis-sippian world (e.g., Meyers [] on nearbytowns in eastern Tennessee). Even if Hally’smodel is not a perfect fit for western North Caro-lina, it serves as a useful tool for analyzing settle-ment patterns at a regional scale.Hally (:) used ceramic dating andmound

stratigraphy to reconstruct the geography andtiming of mound construction and occupation innorthern Georgia during the Mississippianperiod. Based on the assumption that Mississip-pian platform mound sites serve as the capitalsof polities, Hally found that the minimum distanceseparating neighboring, competing centers was

– km, that towns making up a chiefdomwere generally situated along a river floodplainfor a distance up to km from the moundcenter, and that polities were separated by anunpopulated buffer zone measuring between and km (Hally :–). In a follow-upstudy using least-cost-pathways in place ofstraight-line distances, Livingood (:)found that most contemporary mound centerswithin the same polity in northern Georgia wereseparated by no more than four hours in traveltime, and that competing centers were locatedmore than a hour walk away from one another.At the moment, the lack of accurate dating pre-

cludes identifying the platform mound sites withineach of the four spatial groupings as contemporaryor not contemporary. For example, it is unclear towhat extent, if at all, the Mississippian period con-struction and occupation of the mounds atKituwah, Nununyi, and Jasper Allen overlap.Nor do we know if there were contemporary poli-ties centered on the Notley and Nikwasi mounds.As a result, it is not currently possible to use geo-graphic or travel time distances separatingmound sites to identify polities. However,Hally’s () model can be used to developfuture research.Do any of the individual Mississippian period

platform mound sites in western North Carolinarepresent primary and secondary centers in a hier-archical, politically centralized polity, or do indi-vidual mounds represent individual polities?Given the lack of multiple mound sites, the rela-tively great distances separating mound sites ineach of the four groupings (as much as –km), and the mountainous terrain, which wouldincrease the travel time between mound centers,the latter scenario seems more plausible. Thesealternative models can be tested as we gain abetter understanding of the timing of occupationat each of these sites through additional analysesof available ceramic collections from mound sites.While we lack a fine-scale understanding of the

occupation of the Mississippian period platformmounds in the region, there is a clear shift in settle-ment pattern associated with the transition fromplatform mounds to townhouses. Figure showsthe distribution of confirmed and possible Chero-kee townhouses. Based on historic records, weknow that the current archaeological sample ofeighteenth-century Cherokee townhouses isincomplete. However, even this fragmentarydataset suggests that townhouses were muchmore closely spaced than Mississippian period



platform mounds, and that there were many moreof them. We know from historic records that inmany cases townhouses less than km apartserved as centers for contemporary Cherokeetowns (Boulware ; Gragson and Bolstad). This general change in the spacing ofcentral places may represent archaeological evi-dence for a shift away frommore hierarchical, pol-itically centralized, multi-community polities inthe sixteenth century and the rise of more auton-omous, independent, and egalitarian communitiesby the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centu-ries. Gaining a better understanding of the LateMississippian period chronology for the regionwill help us gain a more nuanced understandingof this shift.Another pattern that merits further exploration

emerges when the locations of Mississippianperiod platform mounds and Cherokee town-houses are compared. Three of the spatial group-ings of Mississippian period platform moundsare located in the territories that would becomethe well-defined town groups of the eighteenth-

century Cherokee. The Peachtree and Notleymounds are located in the territory that wouldbecome the Valley Towns, the Nunuyi, Kituwah,and Jasper Allen mounds are located in the OutTowns territory, and the Nikwasi and Dillardmounds roughly mark the northern and southernboundaries of the Middle Towns territory. Ifthese platform mounds represent the presence ofearlier, Mississippian period polities, then from aregional, long-term perspective, it would appearthat the eighteenth-century Cherokee Valley,Middle, and Out towns are built “on top” offormer Mississippian period polities, much in thesame way that Cherokee townhouses are thoughtto have been constructed on the summits ofMissis-sippian period platform mounds at the Peachtree,Nikwasi, Dillard, and Nununyi mounds. The pat-terns observed here may provide regional-scalearchaeological support for the construction ofCherokee identity as a process of “emplacement,”by which “a community attaches itself to a particu-lar place through formal settlement plans, archi-tecture, burials, and other material additions to

FIGURE . Confirmed and Probable Mississippian Period Platform Mounds.

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the landscape” (Rodning :). For historicperiod Cherokee societies, locations marked byMississippian platform mounds may have beenan important part of the cultural landscape, andmay have served as anchors for their groups oftowns. It is also noteworthy that two historicallyrecorded eighteenth-century Cherokee town-houses, those at Cowee and Watauga, were builton natural elevations high above the floodplain.This may represent an attempt to use natural fea-tures to recreate the process of building town-houses on top of platform mounds.In addition to providing important new archae-

ological information about the Cherokee heart-land, this project can serve as an example forpositive collaborative research between archaeolo-gists and indigenous communities in the service ofnative interests (sensu Riggs ). A major cri-tique of archaeological research, and one thatstill applies today, even after the passage of theNative American Graves Protection and Repatria-tion Act (NAGPRA) is that archaeology is

something done to, not with, or for, indigenousgroups (Watkins :–). This project isdesigned to use the tools of archaeology to givesomething back to the Cherokee community, andto serve as a catalyst for an increasingly collabora-tive and engaged archaeology in the Cherokeeheartland.The database from this project will serve as a

monitoring tool for the Cherokee THPO. Moundand town sites, even those that have been badlydisturbed, have a high probability of containinggraves. With updated status and location infor-mation for these sites, many of which are currently“lost,” the THPO staff will be better equipped tocarry out their stewardship responsibility.Furthermore, the results of this project expand

our understanding of the historical geography ofthe Cherokee landscape. In presentations to Cher-okee audiences at public events, the staff of theCherokee THPO and I have observed that mostmembers of the Cherokee community are inti-mately familiar with the location and the

FIGURE . Archaeologically Identified Cherokee Townhouses in the Study Area.




meaning of important sites on the Qualla Bound-ary; sites like Kituwah, Nununyi, and Birdtownmounds. However, members of the Eastern Bandare probably not as familiar with the names,locations, and histories of important mound andtown sites outside the Qualla Boundary, especiallythose mounds that were leveled by late nineteenth-century expeditions. This narrower view of Cher-okee historical geography is at once the result ofthe violence and land cessions of centuries pastand of the destruction of important places bydevelopment.We have already begun to use the information

generated by this project for public outreachefforts in the Cherokee community. In additionto presenting the findings of this project in scho-larly publications and professional conferences,the staff of the THPO and I have presented theresults of our work at a community club meetingsin Cherokee and in other public venues, such aslibraries and community centers in neighboringcounties. We have shared the initial results ofour work with member of the Eastern Band atthe newly organized Cherokee Archaeology Sym-posium in , , and . This publicarchaeology event, organized by the THPO andheld annually on the Qualla Boundary, providesan opportunity for archaeologists working inwestern North Carolina to share their work withmembers of the Cherokee community.At these public events, members of the Cherokee

community provide us with informal feedback andsuggestions for future research in question andanswer sessions after our presentations. Themesthat emerge in these discussions with Cherokeecommunity members include a concern with pre-serving mound and town sites (and specifically,the graves they contain), and a desire to usearchaeology as a tool for understanding Cherokeeculture and identity. These discussions will informfuture investigations of mounds and townhousesin western North Carolina, and are laying thegroundwork for more formal community engage-ment and collaborative research in the years tocome.

CONCLUSION

By relocating and studying poorly understoodmound and town sites, we can create a broaderreconstruction of the Cherokee world beforecontact and removal. Mounds are a physical con-nection to Cherokee cultural identity, materialreminders of past and present Cherokee lifeways

and traditions. Some mounds and townhousesthat were damaged by plowing, development,and antiquarian explorations may still be partiallyintact, and are still important places on the land-scape. For archaeologists and stewards of Chero-kee heritage alike, putting these places back onthe map is important work.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported by a National Science Foun-dation award DEB- from the Long Term EcologicalResearch Program to the Coweeta LTER Program at the Uni-versity of Georgia. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, orrecommendations expressed in the material are those of theauthors and do not necessarily reflect the views of theNational Science Foundation or the University of Georgia.This research was also supported by grants and in-kindsupport from the Cherokee Preservation Foundation, theTribal Historic Preservation Office of the Eastern Band ofCherokee Indians, the Duke Energy Foundation, TRCEnvironmental Corporation, and the University of WestGeorgia. This project was developed in close cooperationwith the Tribal Historic Preservation Office of the EasternBand of Cherokee Indians, and I would like to thankRussell Townsend, Brian Burgess, Tyler Howe, Yolanda Sau-nooke, Miranda Panther, Beau Carroll, and Johi Griffin fortheir role in designing and supporting the research, public out-reach, and preservation efforts of theWestern North CarolinaMounds and Towns Project. Russell Townsend’s support andguidance were especially important. I also thank John Cham-blee and Ted Gragson at the Coweeta Long Term EcologicalResearch Program at the University of Georgia and TashaBenyshek and Paul Webb of TRC for their support of thisresearch. John Kesler of TRC helped direct and completethe fieldwork in western North Carolina and, as always, hisskill and good humor made even the wettest, coldest days inthe field productive. The following individuals helped withthe archival and field research for this project, and provideduseful leads and insight: Linda Hall, Susan Myers, JohnMintz, Steve Claggett, and Dolores Hall of the North Caro-lina Office of State Archaeology, John McDade and ErikKreusch of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park,T. J. Holland, Cultural Resources Manager for the EBCI,Rodney Snedeker and Scott Ashcraft of the U. S. ForestService, Lorie Hansen of the Western North Carolina RockArt Project, Heather Olson, Mandy Terkhorn, MichaelNelson, and Erin Grantham of TRC, Chris Rodning ofTulane, Steve Davis, Vin Steponaitis, and Brett Riggs of theResearch Laboratories of Archaeology of the University ofNorth Carolina, Jason Love and Carol Harper of the CWTLTER, David Hally and Mark Williams of the University ofGeorgia, David Moore of Warren Wilson College, and JaneEastman, Anne Rogers, and Tom Belt of Western CarolinaUniversity. Joelle Freeman, a graduate assistant for theCoweeta LTER, helped me build the GIS layers for thisproject and was instrumental in the project to georeferencethe James Mooney maps. David Hally helped analyze the cer-amics from the survey of CE. Jon Marcoux generouslyprovided artifact photographs and documents related to the

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Notley Mound. Tasha Benyshek, Chris Rodning, Paul Webb,David Hally, Maureen Meyers, and one anonymous reviewerread and commented on earlier versions of this paper; theirinsightful feedback greatly improved this article. Any errorsherein are the responsibility of the author.

NOTES

Between June and August , , the project directortraveled to the following locations to carry out archivalresearch and interviews: the Tribal Historic PreservationOffice (THPO) in Cherokee, the North Carolina Office ofState Archaeology (OSA) in Raleigh and the westernbranch of the OSA in Asheville, the North Carolina StateArchives in Raleigh, the Research Laboratories of Archae-ology at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNCRLA), Western Carolina University (WCU) in Cullowhee,the archives of the National Park Service at the GreatSmoky Mountains National Park visitors center in Gatlin-burg, Tennessee, the Franklin Press in Franklin, the NorthCarolina Rooms of the Buncombe, Henderson, andHaywood County libraries, the office of the register ofdeeds in Buncombe, Henderson, and Jackson County,and the Main Library and the Map Library at the Univer-sity of Georgia. The results from the archival research forthis project are discussed in detail in reports of preliminaryresearch for the Western North Carolina Mound andTowns Project (Steere , ). Background researchalso was conducted using Geographic InformationSystems (GIS) available publically through county landrecord websites and other sources, such as the North Car-olina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) websiteand the North Carolina State University GIS clearinghouse.LIDAR data available through the NCDOT website wereespecially useful for identifying and assessing possiblemound locations.

Surface collections of ceramics and other artifacts from sitesBN, CE, CE, CE, CE, CY,GH, HW, JK, MA, MA, MA,SW, SW, and SW were examined at theResearch Laboratories of Archaeology at the Universityof North Carolina, Chapel Hill. At the time of writing, allartifacts collected during fieldwork for the Western NorthCarolina Mounds and Towns Projects are curated at theAntonio J. Waring, Jr. Laboratory of Archaeology at theUniversity of West Georgia.

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NOTE ON CONTRIBUTOR

Correspondence to: Benjamin A. Steere, Department of Anthropology, GA McKee, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee,NC , USA. Email: [email protected].



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