Who Used Bluff Shelters and When? This seems like a straight forward question but the answer, as with so many things in archeology, is complicated. What most people are expecting as an answer to this question is a tribal name, but this can be difficult. We can possibly put a name to some of the…
Generally archeologists divide prehistory in the southeastern United States into four basic periods based on the lifeways and technology of the prehistoric peoples who lived here. They are: Paleoindian, Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippi. Paleoindian Period Archeologists use the term “Paleoindian” to refer to the earliest Ice Age hunters in the Americas. A distinctive Paleoindian culture,…
First Attempts to Interpret “Bluff-dwellers” The first researchers to look at bluff shelters created two time periods of bluff shelter use and named cultures to go with them. The older culture or period they called the “Bluff-dwellers” and the more recent they called “Top-layer Culture.” They drew a sharp line between the two. Harrington and…