Defining the Mississippian Community through Geophysical Survey at the Watauga Site

Author(s): Eileen Ernenwein

Year: 2025

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Watauga, an ancestral Cherokee site in the upper Little Tennessee River Valley of southwestern North Carolina, includes a Middle Mississippian period center with remnants of two platform mounds. Noninvasive site surveys in summer 2024 examined more than three hectares with ground penetrating radar, magnetometry and UAV-based LiDAR. These combined methods reveal details about mound construction and ceremonial structures preserved in them, and the arrangement of domestic structures surrounding a presumed plaza between the mounds. This poster presents these results with a focus on data processing, analysis, fusion, and interpretation.

Cite this Record

Defining the Mississippian Community through Geophysical Survey at the Watauga Site. Eileen Ernenwein. Presented at The 90th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 2025 ( tDAR id: 511358)

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53980