Heading for the Hills: New Evidence for Migrations to the Upper Tennessee Valley

Tracking Mississippian Migrations from the Central Mississippi Valley to the Ridge and Valley with a Unified Absolute Chronology

“…The construction of palisades in the Ridge and Valley escalates in the mid to late 1200s. Palisade construction sequences are well documented for this period in East Tennessee at the Hiwassee Island and Bell sites (Patch et al 2017(Patch et al , 2018Sullivan 2018a;Sullivan et al 2022) and in northern Georgia with the rise of Etowah (King 2003;Krus 2016). In East Tennessee, the use of communal Hamilton burial mounds ceases by AD 1275, as people begin to move into palisaded villages (Schroedl et al 1990; Sullivan 2016Sullivan , 2018a.…”

“…For example, events at Etowah may be related to the interactions and events that led to movements of Middle Cumberland peoples into northern Georgia. It may not be a coincidence that the appearance of Middle Cumberland ceremonial objects in the Ridge and Valley coincided with the abandonment of Mound C at Etowah and that settlement's violent demise as a major social and political center (King 2007;Lulewicz 2019b;Sullivan et al 2022). Ware (2018:643-645) offers a thought-provoking example of how social rank in another matrilineal, ranked-descent-group society is related to fission when there were food shortages.…”

“…As previously discussed, by AD 1450, there was a major depopulation of the MCR, but this process likely started earlier and proceeded at a slower pace. Stone-box graves, triskele gorgets, and carafe neck, negative-painted bottles show up in the Ridge and Valley by AD 1350 (Lulewicz 2019a; Smith 2020; Sullivan et al 2022); palisaded Dallas towns replaced Hiwassee Island dispersed settlements in the early AD 1300s (Lulewicz 2018; Sullivan 2007, 2016, 2018a). We turn now to events in the Central Mississippi Valley and the alignment with the MCR, before returning to ideas about interactions across the MCR and Ridge and Valley.…”

“…This speculative relationship could be confirmed through comparative studies of Hixon with Etowah and other northern Georgia sites. It is noteworthy that construction of the Hixon mound seems to have been tolerated by the residents of the mostly small and dispersed Mississippian communities in southeastern Tennessee, likely because of the long-standing relationships between communities in northern Georgia and southeastern Tennessee as evidenced by shared and hybrid pottery styles (Sullivan 2016; Sullivan et al 2022). Other evidence of Etowah-related ceremonial objects comes from the Citico mound near downtown Chattanooga (Sullivan 2019) and from farther north at the Long Island site, at the base of the Cumberland Plateau on the Tennessee River near the confluence with the Clinch River.…”

“…Other evidence of Etowah-related ceremonial objects comes from the Citico mound near downtown Chattanooga (Sullivan 2019) and from farther north at the Long Island site, at the base of the Cumberland Plateau on the Tennessee River near the confluence with the Clinch River. At Long Island, three large copper axes, an embossed copper headdress, and an Etowah-style stone palette were found, as were a Middle Cumberland ancestor statue and effigy ceramics (Lowry et al 2017; Sullivan et al 2022).…”