Bentley site
15 GP 15
Bentley site is located in Kentucky
Bentley site
Approximate location within Kentucky today
LocationSouth Portsmouth, Kentucky, Greenup County, Kentucky,  USA
RegionGreenup County, Kentucky
Coordinates38°43′17.76″N 83°1′22.98″W / 38.7216000°N 83.0230500°W / 38.7216000; -83.0230500
History
FoundedCa. 1400
Abandoned1625
PeriodsMadisonville horizon, protohistoric
CulturesFort Ancient culture
Architecture
Architectural detailsNumber of monuments:
Bentley site
NRHP reference No.83002784[1]
Added to NRHPApril 28, 1983

The Bentley site (15Gp15) is a Late Fort Ancient culture Madisonville horizon (post 1400 CE) archaeological site overlain by an 18th-century Shawnee village; it is located within the Lower Shawneetown Archeological District, near South Portsmouth in Greenup County, Kentucky and Lewis County, Kentucky.[2] It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 28, 1983.[1] It is located near four groups of Hopewell tradition mounds, built between 100 BCE and 500 CE, known as the Portsmouth Earthworks.

Description

Mississippian shell gorget from the Hardin Village Fort Ancient site, now at the Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center in Portsmouth, Ohio.
A typical piece of Fort Ancient pottery

The site is a 1.2-hectare (3.0-acre) village on the second flood terrace of the Ohio River, located across from the mouth of the Scioto River.[3] It was excavated in the 1930s and was discovered to have had similar structures and building techniques as those found at another nearby Fort Ancient site, the Hardin Village site located 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) up the Ohio.[4][5] The site was inhabited continuously from 1400 to about 1625 CE and probably had a population of 250 to 500 people living in long, rectangular houses covered with bark and shared by multiple families, as indicated by the several central hearths and interior partitions.[6]

Artifacts

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the community engaged in trade with other villages, as evidenced by the presence in graves of ornamental shell gorgets made from the shells of marine mollusks harvested off the coasts of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.[7][8] Fort Ancient residents probably obtained these shells by trading salt extracted from boiled brine.[9] Also found during the excavations were distinctive Madisonville horizon pottery,[10] including cordmarked, plain and grooved-paddle jars, as well as a variety of chert points, scrapers and ceremonial pipes.[2]

A variety of locally-made tools were recovered from the site, including bone awls, chisels, endscrapers, fishhooks and pins, and some decorative items including pendants, earplugs, and freshwater mussel-shell beads. Tobacco pipes made of stone and ceramic were found, along with a few items of European origin, including copper or brass beads, bracelets, tubes, coils and pendants. These were most likely not obtained directly through contact with Europeans but rather via Native American intermediary trade. Over 300 burials were located, and some skeletons showed signs of tuberculosis, yaws or nonvenereal endemic syphilis.[5][3]

Abandonment

The village was probably abandoned around 1625, possibly because of periodic flooding of the Ohio River.[11] The Fort Ancient residents of southern Ohio were very likely wiped out in the late seventeenth century by infectious diseases brought by Europeans, particularly measles, smallpox, and influenza. Graves from this period often contain multiple burials—from four to over a hundred individuals—reflecting a sudden increase in mortality typical of epidemics.[8] Depopulation may have been hastened by Iroquois raids during the Beaver Wars (1629-1701).[12][13]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. November 2, 2010. Archived from the original on February 20, 2013.
  2. 1 2 Sharp, William E. (1996). "Chapter 6: Fort Ancient Farmers". In Lewis, R. Barry (ed.). Kentucky Archaeology. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 170–176. ISBN 0-8131-1907-3.
  3. 1 2 Henderson, A. Gwynn (2008), "Chapter 6:Mississippi Period" (PDF), in David Pollack (ed.), The Archaeology of Kentucky:An update, Kentucky Heritage Council, pp. 830–832, retrieved November 23, 2020
  4. ↑ David Pollack and A. Gwynn Henderson, "A Preliminary Report on the Contact Period Occupation at Lower Shawneetown (l5GP15), Greenup County, Kentucky," paper presented at the 58th Annual Meeting of the Central States Anthropological Society on April 9, 1982.
  5. 1 2 Lee H. Hanson, The Hardin Village Site, University of Kentucky Press, 1966 ISBN 0598262113
  6. ↑ A. Gwynn Henderson, David Pollack, "A Native History of Kentucky: Selections from Chapter 17: Kentucky," in Native America: A State-by-State Historical Encyclopedia, edited by Daniel S. Murphree, Volume 1, pages 393-440; Greenwood Press, Santa Barbara, CA. 2012
  7. ↑ Dubin, Lois Sherr (1999). North American Indian Jewelry and Adornment: From Prehistory to the Present. New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 978-0-8109-3689-8.
  8. 1 2 A. Gwynn Henderson, "Dispelling the Myth: Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Indian Life in Kentucky," The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Vol. 90, No. 1, The KentuckyImage (Bicentennial Issue), pp. 1-25, Kentucky Historical Society
  9. ↑ Ian W. Brown, Salt and the Eastern North American Indian: An Archaeological Study, Cambridge, Mass., 1980.
  10. ↑ Michelle M. Davidson, "Preliminary mineralogical and chemical study of Pre-Madisonville and Madisonville horizon Fort Ancient ceramics," Norse Scientist, Vol. 1, Issue 1, April 2003; Northern Kentucky University.
  11. ↑ Andrew Lee Feight, "Lower Shawnee Town and the Flood of 1753," Lower Scioto Blog , posted on December 24, 2007
  12. ↑ Caudill, Courtney B., ""Mischiefs So Close to Each Other": External Relations of the Ohio Valley Shawnees, 1730-1775." Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539625770, May 1992
  13. ↑ Andrew Lee Feight, "Lower Shawnee Town and Celoron's Expedition," Scioto Historical, accessed November 22, 2020
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