A New View of the Shell-Bearing Archaic in the Middle Cumberland River Valley

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.