Chapter 1

BELOW THE PLOW ZONE

THE VALLEY’S
HUMAN
PREHISTORY

“I DON’T KNOW what this is, but …,” says a black-haired, dark-eyed high school student holding a handful of dime-size, dirt-covered objects. The hand reaches toward Melissa Crisp, a Parks as Classrooms project coordinator in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, who has also taught students in the field for several summers now. She is voluble, full of energy and information. The student looks hopeful.

“That’s beautiful!” Crisp picks up a small whitish-gray flake from his palm and holds it up. Looking again to his palm, she picks through the rest of the items. “That’s a rock. That looks like pottery. That’s a rock. But that,” she says, going back to the first, small flake, “is a beautiful piece of chert. That’s what that is. See, that’s lighter, but it’s that Knox chert.” Chert was used for projectile points like arrowheads and Knox chert, not locally available, was traded by prehistoric residents with others in Tennessee. So the small chert flake is the remnant of someone’s effort to make an arrowhead many years ago. The young man, palm empty now, tosses the rocks but keeps the mysterious bits and puts them in a labeled paper lunch bag. As part of a Parks as Classrooms summer program, this intern and others like him methodically dig below the plow zone, the dark layer of soil that had been disturbed by farming, to find artifacts from Native American groups who lived or camped in this spot hundreds and thousands of years ago.

By 10:00 A.M. on a humid July morning, a cluster of high school and college interns have dug a half dozen square meters of dirt on one of the valley’s terraces. Shaped like a crescent, the level land is about the length of two football fields alongside Newfound Gap Road, the main road of the park. The field’s vegetation was cut short last week in anticipation of the workshop, but it still harbors poison ivy, so those digging wear gloves and watch where they put their hands. They are also on the lookout for curious mice that might have hidden under a tarp overnight and, as a consequence, for mice-hungry snakes. Both have made cameo appearances over the course of the week. Yesterday, a mouse ran up someone’s pant leg. It’s a funny story now but caused some excitement then. A couple of folks are rather leery of touching or even standing near a tarp. A constant roar and swoosh of road noise provides a soundtrack. Nearby, a camping canopy serves as an office; under its small square of shade lie clipboards for data collection details, artifact bags kept in large plastic bins, rain jackets, a cooler of water, snacks.

The interns are creating an expanding checkerboard of one-meter squares on the north end of the field. Some look about six inches deep and others about twelve; a couple of promising squares are marked off with string and nails to maintain a boundary line and to facilitate mapping later. They are being dug deeper and more carefully, with trowels instead of shovels. Whatever the tool, students scrape the dirt from a single “unit” at a time and place it in plastic buckets for screening.

A second young man, sunburned and sandy-haired, shows Crisp more objects, simultaneously implying a question: “This is charcoal and it stayed in the sifter so that’s why I kept it.” Crisp looks and replies, “Actually, it’s not charcoal; see the sand and the grit in it? That’s just sort of a sandstone.” But she sees another piece: “That’s really good! That’s chert!” The chert piece, like all the finds, goes into a bag marked with unit number, site, and date.

Another student, an African American college student, approaches. “My rock senses are tingling. Is it fire-cracked rock?” Crisp picks the egg-sized rock out of her hand. “No. Look for reddish rock and a sharp break. You’re right; it’s just a rock.” The student returns to her team of three interns who are laughing as they screen their dirt through a hip-high, wood-frame sieve. The sieve stands on two legs and is held parallel to the ground by one intern. One young woman pours dirt into the top of the sieve, and another, who is holding the frame, shakes the dirt through. When only clumps remain, all three use their hands to pick out objects that might be artifacts. Below the sieve, a pile of light-brown, flour-like dirt grows.

“Oh, those are good pieces of chert! I tell ya, Deronya’s got the touch. This unit has just been gold!” Digging is “almost like a puzzle in reverse,” Crisp explains.

This dig is the result of an ongoing partnership between archaeologists at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Its purposes include expanding the knowledge about archaeology of the park area; exposing local students, and especially Cherokee youth, to archaeological practices and career possibilities; and providing college-age interns with training. The program, with support from the university, the park, and the nonprofit Friends of the Great Smoky Mountains, has been in place for several years, and has enabled research providing new insights into the heavy use of Oconaluftee Valley by people from the Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian periods of prehistoric archaeology as well as by the Cherokees, who have continuously inhabited the area for more than a thousand years.

Mike Angst, one of the directors of this weeklong workshop and a senior archaeologist at the University of Tennessee, explains that “archaeologists are historical trash collectors” who remove the topsoil of a site and look for “features,” which can be any kind of evidence of previous use or inhabitance of a place, such as the discolored soil that shows the location of postholes that once held timber that supported a home, the cracked rock and charcoal remains of an earth oven, pottery shards, spear points and arrowheads, and even pollen and plant remains suggesting prehistoric diets. On occasion, evidence of burial sites is found, but these features are left undisturbed. Guidelines established by the landmark Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 require that federally recognized Native American groups be consulted on archaeological digs. The Eastern Band and Great Smoky Mountains National Park consult regularly on park archaeology and have agreed not to excavate gravesites out of respect for Native American cultures and peoples.

“If you find a good place to live, it’s going to continue to be a good place to live for years to come,” Angst tells a half dozen interns at the beginning of the day, orienting them to the current dig and explaining why artifacts from multiple historic periods turn up at single dig sites. Though lab work will later confirm the dating that he and park archaeologist Erik Kreusch estimate in passing, in this field alone the students find remains suggesting several homesites. A Cherokee summer home from the 1700s emerges on the north end. In addition, the dig this year includes completing the processing of a home structure from the 1300s that was partially excavated two years before. It lies at the south end of the same field where the crowd of interns is just breaking the surface, about thirty yards away.

With roughly 500 archaeological sites in the park, archaeologists have found evidence of Native Americans’ presence during every era, from Paleo, Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian to Cherokee. In the Paleo period (ca. 10,000 BCE–8,000 BCE), nomadic peoples migrated east from the Great Plains following megafauna like mastodon, woolly mammoth, horses, and camels that they hunted for subsistence. Though no Paleo sites have been discovered in the park, Paleo-era spear points have been found. Archaeologists speculate that Paleo peoples did not live in the Oconaluftee Valley but traveled up it to mountaintop hunting areas. Other experts believe that villages or camps along the valley, if they did exist, would have been “destroyed or deeply buried” by the increase in rain and snow at the end of the Pleistocene.¹

By the Archaic period (8000 BCE–1000 BCE), the temperatures would have warmed considerably, leading to the extinction of megafauna but also to more tolerable mountain living conditions.² Consequently, Archaic peoples established camps both in the upland areas and valleys and coves of the Smokies. Though they continued to gather seasonal nuts and berries, by the end of the Archaic period they began developing agricultural practices. They cultivated squashes and gourds and domesticated sunflowers and plants such as maygrass, whose seeds could be ground for flour, and goosefoot, also called lambsquarters, which is related to quinoa and produces a pseudocereal.³ Archaic residents of the Oconaluftee Valley still hunted, of course, but focused on smaller game such as deer, elk, buffalo, bear, raccoon, opossum, squirrel, and turkey. Artifacts of stone sinkers for nets suggest that fishing was a source of food and that mussels were consumed, which can be inferred from shell middens, or trash piles. A much larger variety of artifacts establishes the Archaic presence in the park, with more diverse and skilled projectile points found with both lanceolate shapes and notched forms. Also, the atlatl, which is a stick that was used to guide the throwing of a spear, appears during this period.⁴ This tool works like a cradle for the back end of a spear; it steadies the spear as the hunter pulls back his arm; when the spear is thrown, the atlatl provides increased leverage and thrust. Consequently, the tool allowed for more accurate and powerful throws. Stone weights were lashed to the atlatl as well, and these steadied the stick and made for even longer throws. In addition, grooved axes, grinding slabs, cruciform drills, and fire-cracked rocks from pit cooking are common in Archaic sites.⁵

Under a green canopy used to provide shade, a smaller group of three, or sometimes four, interns, led by Kreusch, digs deeper and deeper on a few previously unexcavated features at the 1350 house site, the one at the south end of the field. This date places the house in the Mississippian era, and a circular pattern of postholes reveals that it was a structure more or less resembling a Cherokee winter residence, which would have been a small but well-insulated home with a vestibule entrance.⁶ The diggers follow the clues of dark patches in the orange-brown dirt. Some of these patches turn out to be mole holes, but others are revealed to be additional postholes.

Digging continues. Every so often park visitors stop their cars along the roadside and walk over to see what’s happening under the canopy and out in the sun. The visitors, archaeologists, interns, and volunteers chat about arrowheads and other finds as the digging continues. A consensus emerges that digging in the dirt is just about the best way to spend time. Lunchtime comes with a break. An afternoon shower arrives, and everyone huddles under the canopy. Midafternoon, Kreusch focuses on a feature that merits his professional and exclusive attention. Actually, its presence was noted a couple of years ago when the site was first identified, but limited time did not permit this feature’s excavation. At day’s end, a tarp is thrown over the entire house site. From the road twenty yards away, the site is unremarkable. No cause for passing cars to stop.

The next morning, the digging continues. Same canopy and tools. Same mouse in the folds of the tarp. Kreusch is back at the big, ever deeper, and more intriguing feature. Crisp joins in to dig what turns out to be a mole hole. Her son Jordan becomes Kreusch’s assistant. Angst and several other University of Tennessee and park archaeologists direct the work at the north-end site. But under the south-end canopy, the trio settles into their tasks as they joke and complain about their feet falling asleep and their hands cramping. The main feature’s dirt is quite black. Kreusch scrapes and digs with a trowel or, sometimes, a big cooking spoon, the kind you would use to stir a gallon-size soup pot. The hole becomes deep and difficult to reach into. Kreusch puts the dirt he excavates into buckets. Jordan sifts the soil for artifacts, and then he bags all the dirt in plastic five-gallon trash bags so that it can be taken to the university lab for analysis.

At last, something interesting happens. One after another, Kreusch pulls out fist-size fire-cracked rocks until a pile exists. They suggest the remains of an earthen oven, rather like a pit barbecue. The oven cavity, about two feet in diameter, yields, at the bottom, roughly three feet below the surface of the field, the find of the season: five large shards of pottery. Kreusch pulls them out of the pit in the space of twenty minutes. They are all alike in design, composition, and color, which is a dark, grayish black. They are a bit damp. After few moments spent arranging the pieces on a clipboard, Kreusch shows how they fit together into a partial cooking vessel. Maybe about 30 percent of the whole vessel is found. The rest does not appear, even after more digging. The vessel has been paddle stamped, giving it a cross-hatched external texture as a design as well as tempering for improved firing success and shortened cooking times.

“Woodland,” Kreusch says. “This is from the year zero.” The pot shards probably come from the middle Woodland period, or the Pigeon Phase, because its maker used crushed quartz as a tempering agent in the clay. Though the vessel shards do not include the base, this kind of jar might have had four feet to support it in the oven, a design and functional feature that was very common.⁷ By the late Woodland period, the quartz was replaced by sand. Ceramics mark the beginning of the Woodland period, and growing sophistication in their composition and design are hallmarks of the increasing technical skill of its potters. Residents of this era constructed villages in the large floodplains of the valley.⁸

Woodland culture, spanning between 1000 BCE and AD 1000, was based in part on cultivating corn as well as crops of squash, beans, and pumpkins, so the necessity of tending the fields meant that people were less nomadic and stayed in established villages for years at a time.⁹ In turn, more leisure time led to decoration and ornamentation, so Woodland peoples carved combs and jewelry like pendants from antlers and seashells.¹⁰ Ceremonial burials in earthen mounds also began during this time in the Appalachian Summit, although the practice had begun earlier elsewhere. Trade between residents of the Appalachian Summit area and others in Tennessee and the Ohio River Valley was well established. The mountain communities traded quartz for “copper, prismatic blades of chert and chalcedony, beads, pins, and clay figurines,” among other items such as ceramics.¹¹

Even though Woodland culture was based on farming, hunting still provided a significant part of these peoples’ diet. Woodland-era hunting camps were located on ridges and upland valleys.¹² Spear hunting with the help of the atlatl continued, but the bow and arrow became a major Woodland-era innovation for bringing down deer, elk, buffalo, and bear.¹³

Of course, artifacts from the Woodland era make up just a fraction of prehistoric objects found in the Oconaluftee Valley. Far more remains exist from Mississippian culture, which spanned the years 1000–1540. In fact, the structure above the Woodland earthen oven is a prime example of what recent archaeological work has, so to speak, turned up. Though some work had been done in the valley in the early days of the park and in the 1970s, more recent archaeology digs began in 2007 when old water and sewer lines for the Smokemont Campground were replaced. At that time, four separate sites along the Newfound Gap Road and in the valley were excavated, and the most promising of those with the most intact deposits was found to be this site that the team has returned to for a number of years. Four structures were found on this one site: two from the Qualla phase (1450–1838) and two others from the earlier Pisgah phase (1000–1450). The structure “above” the Woodland oven was one of the Pisgah structures and has been determined to be a house.¹⁴

This house, known formally as Structure 2, could be identified by the remains of the wooden posts, called postmolds, that would have supported its walls and roof. Two parallel trenches marked an arched, vestibule-like entryway. So the house itself was about a sixteen-foot-square building with an entrance on the northeast corner.¹⁵ It had four large supports inside the exterior walls to support a roof of thatched cane or bark, and the walls may have been composed of sunbaked clay; that is, “lathed with cane and plastered with clay before being thatched with grass.”¹⁶ Inside, the house had a raised clay hearth in the center of the structure with a hole in the peaked roof for smoke to escape.¹⁷ Sleeping areas made of cane benches may have been stationed around the walls with partitions between them; household items would have been stored around the sides as well. These details are all typical of this era’s domestic structures. And although this home seems quite small, it is important to recall that Mississippians mostly lived outdoors except during bad weather, so they did not spend much time inside such dwellings.¹⁸ The artifacts from the home include “four triangular projectile points” and some suggestive floral remains, including corn, tobacco, and the quinoa-like chenopodium. These crops may have been cultivated in the surrounding field.¹⁹

Importantly, archaeologists speak of their jobs as destructive in nature. Unlike the preserved Italian town of Pompeii, which was buried beneath the lava and ash from Mount Vesuvius’s eruption in the year 79 and then excavated and preserved as ruins, for the most part excavation means destruction. Angst explains to the interns, “You can only dig a feature once. It’s very important that we record everything we do. Plan view, test view, photographs—kind of tedious paperwork, but essential.” After the event of the dig ends, that site is gone, so all archaeologists can do is to create as accurate a record of it as possible.

After decades of work throughout the region, southeastern archaeologists have learned that life became more varied and complex in the Mississippian era. Agriculture based on corn, beans, and squash was the dominant means of subsistence, though hunting continued.²⁰ There was more: more leisure than the Woodland peoples had, more trade, more ceremonies, and more elaborate social structures and social classes. Ceramics and jewelry became more elaborate. The Mississippians are known for their platform mounds and a class of chiefs and elites whose homes were located on top of mounds along with a temple and altar.²¹ These were the central features of large villages that were ringed for protection by palisades, or post walls finished with clay.²² Though no mounds currently exist in the park, it is possible that a mound, now long plowed down, was once near the Mountain Farm Museum, adjacent to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center. Evidence of archaeological features and artifacts suggests that a number of Mississippian homes were located there.²³ An even more likely candidate for a mound is Ravensford, an area defined by the Raven Fork tributary of the Oconaluftee River that once fell inside the park. After a land swap in 2003, the area now belongs to the Eastern Band and serves as the site of a K-12 school complex.²⁴ Before the construction of the schools, the Cherokees excavated the area. The valley has other mound sites as well. Mounds certainly existed at Kituwah, Nununyi, and Bird Town. Kituwah was the location of an early Cherokee town, and stories establish that before the Cherokees moved into the region, other peoples were settled there in an established town. Nununyi, or Potato Town, also boasts a mound. It was an eighteenth-century Cherokee settlement.²⁵ And, of course, a mound existed at Bird Town, the site that was once called Egwânul’ti, the Cherokee village for which the valley and river are named.

The Mississippian presence in the valley is eloquently described in Angst’s conclusion to a 2012 report he wrote for the park: “One could easily imagine a series of contemporaneous household clusters along the lower reaches of Raven Fork, at its mouth in the broad alluvial valley, downstream at least as far as Nununyi and then up to the Oconaluftee River to [the excavated site] and beyond. Furthermore, many non-contemporaneous sites undoubtedly occur here that span the entire duration of the archeological Qualla phase.”²⁶

One wonders, then, not where prehistoric peoples lived in the valley, but where they didn’t live. Twenty-first-century visitors to the park should imagine the valley as a place of continuous and significant habitation from the close of the Ice Age until the park’s establishment. The findings from archaeology help park officials understand how best to manage the park going forward. Kreusch explains, “What is the current park supposed to look like? [From archaeology] we can learn what the forest used to look like and know more about the exotics that have appeared. We can learn what we can do and what we are managing the park to be and become. How does the past environment relate to what we see today? With climate change, we can see what is changing, compared to the past.” These are the thoughts that surface with each season of research in the bottomlands of the Oconaluftee Valley.