A Geoarchaeological Examination of the Elijah Bray Site: Exploring the Extent of the Pinson Landscape, West Tennessee, USA

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Pinson Mounds, located along the South Fork of the Forked Deer River (SFFDR) in West Tennessee, is considered the largest Middle Woodland (ca. 200 BCE – CE 500) ceremonial center in the Southeast. Containing at least 13 earthworks, the site provides important opportunities to examine complex social and environmental interactions among societies across the Eastern Woodlands. However, Pinson represents only one collection of earthworks along the SFFDR. Private ownership of the Elijah Bray Site, a satellite property 8 km to the southeast and containing two known conical mounds, has hindered archaeological understanding of the overall Pinson Landscape. Growing relationships with landowners have provided access to the site. This presentation will discuss data obtained from recent geophysical surveys and LiDAR analyses of Elijah Bray. We will also discuss analyses of a bulk soil sample column collected from a road-cut soil profile adjacent to Mound 1 that included particle size analysis, sequential loss-on-ignition, and magnetic susceptibility to test whether this exposed profile represents human landscape modification. Findings from this study expand our understanding of how Indigenous peoples interacted with their environments across the SFFDR, allowing us to lay the foundations for a landscape biography of the wider Pinson Landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38809.0