EKU project on depot site uncovers evidence of 700-year-old village

While most of their classmates learn their way around Richmond as they keep one eye on the future, some Eastern Kentucky University students have been examining what remains of a 700-year-old civilization just south of the community.

Over four recent summers, dozens of students in Dr. Kelli Carmean’s Field Methods in Archaeology course have been digging beneath a ridge that overlooks the Muddy Creek floodplain on the Blue Grass Army Depot.

Their painstaking work at the Broaddus site, a site named for the last landowner, has uncovered the remains of a Fort Ancient village site that likely spanned about 25 years approximately 1300 A.D.

It will also be the subject of the university’s annual Roark Distinguished Lecture, to be delivered by Carmean on April 5, at 7:15 p.m. in Walnut Hall of the Keen Johnson Building. A reception at 6:30 will precede her presentation.

The EKU archaeological research has documented the site as a medium-sized, sedentary circular village, with a cleared plaza area in the center, a low burial mound, approximately 70 centimeters in height and 25 meters in diameter, and simple individual houses. At most, Carmean said, the village was home to approximately 200 men, women and children.

“The Broaddus site was one of many small villages scattered throughout the Ohio Valley,” Carmean said. “Because of its location on the depot, it has not been plowed, surface-collected or looted since the 1940s, so it is one of the best preserved we have in Madison County.”

For that reason, the fieldwork also uncovered a wide range of artifacts. About 100 small triangular arrowheads attest to the site’s Late Prehistoric Period occupation, according to Carmean, who added that slight stylistic differences suggest a later re-occupation of the site, perhaps in the late 17th century. A variety of earlier spear points were recovered as well, indicating that their ancestors’ weapons played a role in their local identity. Large quantities of ceramic sherds also have been found, as well as remains of fire hearths, ash pits, postholes and human burials. The pieces are examined and catalogued in a laboratory in EKU’s Keith Building.

The Depot site was an ideal marriage for Carmean’s research needs.

“I needed something local, a site my students could access and study,” she said. “I’m interested in sedentary village farm life, and this site popped up at the right time. All the characteristics and qualities converged perfectly as a place to establish a long-term archaeology field school. And the Depot was really interested so they could learn more about cultural resources on their property.”

The Broaddus site is much smaller than its Mississippian counterparts near Wickliffe, Ky., and St. Louis and elsewhere, Carmean noted.

“The Mississippian town (with perhaps 2,000 residents) was a more advanced political system overseen by strong and powerful chiefs, while the middle Ohio Valley Fort Ancient society was composed of smaller, politically autonomous villages that did not have some higher political figure controlling them either within the village or from some neighboring town,” she said.

The finding of non-local raw materials from distant locales revealed that the Broaddus village, while politically autonomous, was far from isolated and, in fact, in contact with a network of trade links. One chlorite ornament fragment, for instance, came all the way from North Carolina. Another surprising find was a broken marine shell bead, which was brought either from the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic coast.

Those who lived at the Broaddus site more than 700 years ago resided in very simple “wigwam” dwellings, usually covered in thatch, grass or bark. When their housing deteriorated, wild game and firewood supply dwindled and/or the soil was no longer as productive for farming, they simply moved, Carmean said.

While television shows might paint a different picture, archaeology is laborious, dirty work that requires considerable academic preparation and a strong commitment to what Carmean terms “stewardship of the past.”

“Excavating an archaeological site is a privilege and not a right,” she said. “We are protectors and guardians of the past, because once we excavate it, it is gone forever.”

To be eligible to enroll in the writing-intensive Anthropology 351 course, a pre-requisite for the Field Methods class, students first must pass Introduction to Cultural Anthropology and Anthropology of Human Society. They then must earn at least a B in Anthropology 351 to be eligible for Field Methods.

“My students are very well-prepared by the time they get out there,” Carmean said. Once on the site, students turn from battling exams to managing the challenges of fieldwork: wiping sweat and dirt from their brow and fighting bugs, ticks and poison ivy.

“They gain not only knowledge, but also come to understand whether or not archaeology is for them,” Carmean said. “The more experience you have at different sites, the better an archaeologist you are. Every site is different, so the field methods at every site will be a little different. There’s just no substitute for being out there in the field.”

Leann Lacy, a senior anthropology major from West Liberty who serves as president of the EKU Association of Student Anthropologists, will present her senior honors thesis on a study of cordage twist patterning found on cordmarked ceramics this spring. After graduation, she plans to pursue a master’s degree in archaeology or a career in historic preservation.

“Field school brings you down to earth, so to speak,” Lacy said. “No more dreaming, here’s the work and here’s a typical site, one you may actually work at in the future. Being in field school, you also learn digging techniques, how to lay out a grid, etcetera. You may begin to realize that digging for eight hours a day at the mercy of the weather may not be what you want to do.”

Mark Sweet, a recent anthropology graduate who 28 years ago earned a geology degree from EKU, agreed that “there is simply no substitute for field experience. In the three-dimensional world of ‘the field,’ you actually see the artifacts and no degree of classroom preparation can substitute for actually working within the matrix surrounding the artifacts in order to properly gather the archaeological data. The lab work was very practical and hands-on. We worked with and catalogued the same artifacts we gathered in the field investigation phase.”

Sweet, a geologist and part-owner of a company that performs environmental investigation work, said he hopes to use his archaeology degree in retirement or in pursuit of his hobby

In her upcoming April 5 Distinguished Roark Lecture, Carmean said her “goal is to shed some light on what life was like here before European contact and describe how archeologists go about investigating a site.”

Also, Carmean has secured a book contract with Waveland Press for a book entitled “The Village at Muddy Creek: Fort Ancient Indian Life in the Central Ohio Valley.”

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