The Tullahoma and Chickamauga Campaigns

This chapter explores the origins, conduct, and consequences of the 1863 Tullahoma and Chickamauga campaigns, part of the Union strategy to capture the critical Confederate transportation hub at Chattanooga. These campaigns turned on the politics of command, with discord on both sides shaping events and the personalities of commanders Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans and Gen. Braxton Bragg playing important roles in the outcome of these conflicts. The campaigns also resulted in widespread disruption in Georgia, Alabama, and middle and east Tennessee as widespread foraging, food shortages, and a growing number of refugees and displaced persons felt its effects. Guerrillas ranged through the Tennessee River Valley, preying upon soldiers and civilians alike. Unionists in the region found themselves in complicated and painful situations as they negotiated the difficult environment of invasion and military occupation. Both sides also experienced significant defeats in these campaigns; the Confederates, who lost most of Tennessee during the Tullahoma Campaign, and the Union, losing at the Battle of Chickamauga. These issues of discord, disruption, and defeat also played out against the backdrops of emancipation and national political consequences bearing on the coming 1864 U.S. presidential election. As the chapter demonstrates, the consequences of these campaigns were important for the Union’s continuing effort to secure Chattanooga and carry the war deep into the Confederate heartland in 1864.

Declining Foraging Efficiency in the Middle Tennessee River Valley Prior to Initial Domestication

Recently, researchers investigating the origins of domestication have debated the significance of resource intensification in the shift from foraging to food production. In eastern North America, one of several independent centers of domestication, this question remains open. To determine whether initial domestication may have been preceded by intensification in eastern North America at approximately 5000 cal BP, I evaluated the archaeofaunal assemblages from six sites in the middle Tennessee River valley. Analyses of these data suggest that overall foraging efficiency gradually declined prior to initial domestication, but patch-specific declines in foraging efficiency occurred in wetland habitats and not terrestrial ones. Climatic warming and drying during the Middle Holocene, growing human populations, and oak-hickory forest expansion were the likely drivers of these changes in foraging efficiency. These results support the hypothesis that initial domestication in eastern North America was an outcome of intensification driven by environmental change and human population increases. Finally, while the debate concerning the relationship of intensification to domestication has been framed in terms of a conflict between niche construction theory and optimal foraging theory, these perspectives are compatible and should be integrated to understand domestication more fully.

Declining foraging efficiency in the Middle Tennessee River Valley prior to initial domestication

Recently, researchers investigating the origins of domestication have debated the significance of resource intensification in the shift from foraging to food production. In eastern North America, one of several independent centers of domestication, this question remains open. To determine whether initial domestication may have been preceded by intensification in eastern North America at approximately 5000 cal BP, I evaluated the archaeofaunal assemblages from six sites in the middle Tennessee River valley. Analyses of these data suggest that overall foraging efficiency gradually declined prior to initial domestication, but patch-specific declines in foraging efficiency occurred in wetland habitats and not terrestrial ones. Climatic warming and drying during the Middle Holocene, growing human populations, and oak-hickory forest expansion were the likely drivers of these changes in foraging efficiency. These results support the hypothesis that initial domestication in eastern North America was an outcome of intensification driven by environmental change and human population increases. Finally, while the debate concerning the relationship of intensification to domestication has been framed in terms of a conflict between niche construction theory and optimal foraging theory, these perspectives are compatible and should be integrated to understand domestication more fully.

Rethinking Massacres

This research analyzes mass graves from the Middle Tennessee River Valley and highlights problems with how massacres are defined and identified in bioarchaeology. Definitions of mass graves and the utility of using these features to identify massacres in the past are explored. It is suggested that there are different types of massacres and that a three-tiered definition of massacres may be more appropriate. In order to form a more complete understanding of whether or not they represent the victims of massacres, this revised approach to studying massacres is applied to several human skeletal assemblages in this region.