The Cherokees of Tuckaleechee Cove

Jon Marcoux

This volume explores culture change and persistence within a late seventeenth-century Cherokee community in eastern Tennessee. In this study, Marcoux and his colleagues utilize household-level data from the Townsend site, an archaeological site located within a mountainous refuge known as Tuckaleechee Cove. Through the analysis of multiple datasets, these researchers identify various ways that community members adapted to the challenges of life in a new colonial reality. This publication represents the first synthesis of archaeological data associated with late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Cherokee lifeways and is the first major work addressing Cherokee archaeology published in over twenty-five years. The reader will find a thorough discussion of the political, economic, and social landscape within which the Cherokees of Tuckaleechee Cove lived, as well as detailed descriptions and quantitative analyses of architecture, archaeological features, pottery, lithic artifacts, glass trade beads, ethnobotanical and faunal remains. These data are combined to construct the most complete picture we have of daily life in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Cherokee communities.

Order from the University of Michigan Press.

Publisher: Museum of Anthropology

Year of Publication: 2012

Location: Ann Arbor, MI

Pages: 296

Price: $33

Print ISBN: 978-0-915703-79-1

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-951519-74-2

Monograph Series / Number: Memoirs No. 52

Tables / Illustrations: 60 tables, 136 illustrations

Notes, Comments, Reviews:

“Specialists in Eastern Woodlands archaeology will appreciate this well-written and well-researched monograph, and so will readers with interests in households
and in culture contact and colonialism. Marcoux is fluent in theoretical debates. . . . His adept applications of correspondence analysis and sophisticated visualizations of quantitative datasets . . . bolster his compelling arguments about Cherokee adaptations to life in the colonial Southeast.” American Antiquity

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