North Carolina Archaeology Volume 59 2010 North Carolina Archaeology Volume 59 October 2010 CONTENTS European Trade Goods at Cherokee Settlements in Southwestern North Carolina Christopher B. Rodning .................................................................................... 1 “Did You But Know the Worth That’s Buried Here”: Managing Fort Bragg’s Historic Cemeteries Linda F. Carnes-McNaughton and Jennifer Friend ......................................... 85 “Next to Two Rivers”: The Wilson County Sesquicentennial Survey to Locate the Late Woodland and Protohistoric Tuscarora Community of Tosneoc Thomas E. Beaman, Jr. ................................................................................. 113 Book Review Historical Archaeology: Why the Past Matters, by Barbara J. Little Thomas E. Beaman, Jr. .................................................................................. 141 About the Authors ....................................................................................... 147 North Carolina Archaeology (formerly Southern Indian Studies) Published jointly by The North Carolina Archaeological Society, Inc. 109 East Jones Street Raleigh, NC 27601-2807 and The Research Laboratories of Archaeology University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3120 R. P. Stephen Davis, Jr., Editor Officers of the North Carolina Archaeological Society President: Tommy Stine, 1923-36th Avenue NE, Hickory NC 28601. Vice President: Butch “Archie” Smith, 143 Cobble Ridge Drive, Pittsboro, NC 27312. Secretary: Linda Carnes-McNaughton, Dept of the Army, Public Works Business Center (AFZA-PW-E) (Carnes), Fort Bragg Garrison Command (ABN), Installation Management Agency, Fort Bragg, NC 28310. Treasurer: E. William Conen, 804 Kingswood Dr., Cary, NC 27513. Editor: R. P. Stephen Davis, Jr., Research Laboratories of Archaeology, CB 3120, Alumni Building, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3120. Associate Editor (Newsletter): Dee Nelms, Office of State Archaeology, N.C. Division of Archives and History, 4619 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-4619. At-Large Members: Tony Boudreaux, Department of Anthropology, 287 Flanagan Building, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858-4353. Kevin Donald, Office of State Archaeology, N.C. Division of Archives and History, 4619 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-4619. Theresa McReynolds, 10716 Peppermill Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Scott Seibel, 524 S. New Hope Rd, Raleigh NC 27610. Clay Swindell, 226 Ibis Way, Elizabeth City, NC 27909. Information for Subscribers North Carolina Archaeology is published once a year in October. Subscription is by membership in the North Carolina Archaeological Society, Inc. Annual dues are $15.00 for regular members, $25.00 for sustaining members, $10.00 for students, $20.00 for families, $250.00 for life members, $250.00 for corporate members, and $25.00 for institutional subscribers. Members also receive two issues of the North Carolina Archaeological Society Newsletter. Membership requests, dues, subscriptions, changes of address, and back issue orders should be directed to: Dee Nelms, Office of State Archaeology, N.C. Division of Archives and History, 4619 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-4619. Information for Authors North Carolina Archaeology publishes articles on the archaeology of North Carolina and neighboring states. One copy of each manuscript, with accompanying tables, figures, and bibliography, should be submitted to the Editor. Manuscripts should be double spaced with ample margins throughout. Style should conform to guidelines published in American Antiquity, vol. 57, no. 4 (October, 1992) (see also http://www.saa.org/Publications/Styleguide/styframe.html). The Editor can assist those wishing to submit a manuscript but who are unfamiliar with American Antiquity style. EUROPEAN TRADE GOODS AT CHEROKEE SETTLEMENTS IN SOUTHWESTERN NORTH CAROLINA by Christopher B. Rodning Abstract This paper describes European trade goods from the Cherokee settlement at the Coweeta Creek site, located in the Appalachian Summit province of southwestern North Carolina, and compares this assemblage with those from the nearby Alarka and Tuckasegee sites. Most of the European trade goods from Coweeta Creek are associated with late stages of the public structure at the site, from nearby pit features, and from the plaza, and there are comparatively few trade goods from domestic areas around the plaza. Most of the domestic houses at Coweeta Creek were abandoned at the point at which European trade goods began to reach the settlement, or soon afterwards. The presence of European goods at Coweeta Creek, Alarka, and Tuckasegee demonstrates an early interest in and access to trade goods by Cherokee groups before the development of formal trade relations between Cherokee towns and the Carolina colony in the early eighteenth century. Life in Cherokee towns of the southern Appalachians changed dramatically during the course of the eighteenth-century deerskin trade and the seventeenth-century slave trade that preceded it (Figure 1) (Bowne 2000, 2005, 2006, 2009; Ethridge 1984, 2006, 2009a, 2009b; Gallay 2002; Goodwin 1977; Greene 1999; Hatley 1989, 1993, 2006; King 1977, 2007; Marcoux 2008; Martin 1994; Mason 1963, 2005; Meyers 2009; Riggs and Shumate 2003; Riggs et al. 1998; Schroedl 1978, 1986a, 1986b, 1994, 2000, 2001, 2009; Smith 1992, 2002; Waselkov 1989, 1994). By the mid-1700s, European traders and European trade goods were relatively common in Cherokee towns in northeastern Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and the western Carolinas. Before the mid-1600s, on the other hand, European trade goods and European colonists themselves were scarce in Cherokee country. This paper considers the early introduction of European trade goods in southwestern North Carolina, focusing primarily on artifacts from the Coweeta Creek site in the upper Little Tennessee Valley, and comparisons of this assemblage with trade goods from the Alarka and Tuckasegee sites (Figure 2) (Coe 1961; Davis et al. 1996; Dickens 1976, 1 NORTH CAROLINA ARCHAEOLOGY [Vol. 59, 2010] Figure 1. Historic Cherokee town areas in the southern Appalachians, and the locations of the Coweeta Creek, Alarka, and Tuckasegee sites in southwestern North Carolina. 1978, 1979, 1986; Egloff 1967; Egloff 1971; Keel 1976, 2002; Keel et al. 2002; Lambert 2000, 2001, 2002; Riggs and Rodning 2002; Rodning 1999, 2001a, 2001b, 2002a, 2002b, 2002c, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2009a, 2009b; Rodning and VanDerwarker 2002; Shumate et al. 2005; VanDerwarker and Detwiler 2000, 2002; Ward 2002; Wilson and Rodning 2002). Unlike other areas in the Southeast that experienced cycles of settlement and abandonment—such as the Savannah and Etowah valleys (Anderson 1994; Anderson et al. 1986; Hally 1986; King 2003)—the Appalachian Summit experienced continuous settlement from late prehistory through the 1700s (Dickens 1978, 1979, 1986; Wynn 1990). Native towns in the Appalachian Summit were connected to trade and interaction networks with other groups in the Southeast, but native groups in the Appalachian Summit had only brief encounters with Spanish expeditions during the 1500s, and efforts at trade and diplomacy by Charles Town (founded in 1670) were concentrated in other areas of the Southeast during the 1600s and the first decade of the 1700s. 2 TRADE GOODS AT CHEROKEE SETTLEMENTS Figure 2. Spatial distribution of European trade goods at Coweeta Creek. My primary interest in this study is the Coweeta Creek site, located in the area of the Middle Cherokee settlements, downstream from the confluence of Coweeta Creek and the Little Tennessee River. This site was the location of a relatively compact settlement with a public structure (known as a townhouse), town plaza, and domestic houses during the mid-to-late seventeenth century. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, a townhouse was still present at the site and still located in the same place as it had been since it was first built, but most or all of the domestic houses at the site had been abandoned. Tuckasegee is located along the Tuckasegee River within the area of the Cherokee Out towns (Dickens 1979; Duncan and Riggs 2003; Greene 1999; Keel 1976; Riggs et al. 1998; Riggs and Shumate 2003). Alarka is located 3 NORTH CAROLINA ARCHAEOLOGY [Vol. 59, 2010] near the confluence of the Nantahala and Little Tennessee rivers (Shumate et al. 2005). This paper specifically poses the following questions about the Coweeta Creek, Alarka, and Tuckasegee sites. What kinds of European trade goods are found at these sites? What was the source, or what were the sources, of the European trade goods that first found their way to the mountains of southwestern North Carolina? What is the spatial distribution of European trade goods at Coweeta Creek? And, what effects did the arrival of European trade goods have on native lifeways and the cultural landscape of southwestern North Carolina? Some items derived from Spanish settlements in northern Florida circulated through Native American exchange networks during the seventeenth century (Waselkov 1989; Worth 2002), and trade relations between the Carolina colony1 and native groups of the Southeast first developed after the founding of Charles Town in the late seventeenth century (Hatley 1993; Rothrock 1976). The first historically known trade agreements between Lower Cherokee towns and the Carolina colony date to 1684, and the first formal agreements between the Middle Cherokee towns and Carolina date to 1693 (Shumate et al. 2005:6.28- 6.29).