Archaeological Field School
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ETSU Archaeological Field School Summer 2009
Eagle Drink Bluff Shelter, Upper Cumberland Plateau, Tennessee
ETSU's annual archaeological field school will take place during the first three weeks of First Summer Session 2009. Students will spend three weeks in the field (June 7th – 27th) on the Upper Cumberland Plateau conducting rock shelter excavations.
Goals of the 2009 field season
We will conclude excavations at Eagle Drink Bluff Shelter in 2009. The shelter contains well dated deposits and artifacts from the Late Archaic through the late Middle Woodland, about 4000-1300 years ago. These deposits were the subject of ETSU archaeological field schools from 2005-07. However, the lowest deposits – only just reached in 2007 - are Middle Archaic in age, about 5-7000 years ago. Some researchers have proposed that the Upper Cumberland Plateau was largely abandoned during this time because of hypothesized warmer and drier conditions. These researchers based their ideas on two things: 1) the de facto assumption that highland regions are ones of less permanent water sources in times of environmental stress, and 2) existing surface collections of stylistically characteristic Middle Archaic artifacts from many rock shelters in the region (e. g., artifacts removed from their original context). Their work is also based in outdated paleoclimate models. More recent work has indicated dynamic climatic conditions during the Middle Archaic, specifically greater seasonal contrast. My research has recorded many shelters with permanent springs associated, even in very dry months. In the 2009 field season, we will test this generalized abandonment hypothesis with controlled stratigraphic exacavations rather than surface collected data from dubious contexts. We will also excavate the remaining Woodland deposits. For some background on previous work at the site, see Luminescence Dates and Woodland Ceramics from Rock Shelters on the Upper Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee
field school web site: http://faculty.etsu.edu/franklij/etsu_archaeological_field_school_09.htm