People of The High Country: Jackson Hole Before the Settlers. By Gary A. Wright and Only The River Runs Easy: A Historical Portrait of the Upper Green River Valley. By H. L. Skinner

1986 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 198-199
Author(s):  
Robert Kuhn McGregor
Author(s):  
Tanya M. Peres ◽  
Aaron Deter-Wolf

While Archaic shell-bearing sites along the coastal margins of the southeastern United States have been the subject of multi-year investigations, interior riverine shell-bearing sites have, with the exception ofCarlstonAnnis on the Green River in Kentucky, garnered only limited study. Nevertheless, the combined data from coastal and interior shell-bearing sites have led to broad regional interpretations of the Shell Mound Archaic and debate between archaeologists about site construction and function. Archaic shell-bearing sites in the southeastern United States vary widely in terms of chronologies, horizontal and vertical structure, the types of cultural features they contain, and molluscan species composition. This has led to a growing realization that Archaic shell-bearing sites cannot—or should not—be lumped into a single pan-regional culture and that the “mound vs. midden” debate presents an interpretive logjam that does not satisfactorily address local and regional variations. The specific chronologies and composition of Archaic shell-bearing sites in the Middle Cumberland River Valley of Middle Tennessee constitute a unique regional phenomenon distinct from other interior riverine sites lumped within the Shell Mound Archaic paradigm.


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