Investigations at the Barnes Site (40DV307)

At the Barnes Site (40DV307) along the Cumberland River, two discrete shell-bearing deposits dating to the Late Archaic and Middle Woodland periods (approximately 3500 and 1800 cal BP respectively) are separated by a thick Early Woodland–period shell-free stratum dated between 2900 and 2000 cal BP. Alternating shell-bearing and shell-free deposits at sites elsewhere in the southern Ohio Valley have often been viewed as indicative of long-term changes in subsistence practices and traditions or large-scale environmental fluctuations affecting resource abundance. At Barnes, however, chronological, geoarchaeology, and paleoethnobotany data from shell-bearing strata recovered in 2010 and 2012 suggest that the two shell-bearing deposits mark the locations of shellfish processing at or near the river’s edge when the river channel was physically closer to the current site location. Particle-size data indicate that when the shell-free deposit accumulated, the site was situated in a low-energy depositional zone, suggesting that the river channel had shifted further to the west during that period of time.