04/26/2022
So, what were the earliest towns in Kentucky? Numerous internet and pages will tell you it was places like Fort Boonesborough, Fort Harrod or other revolutionary-era settlements that started as military outposts and later turned into agricultural settlements after Native Americans were forcibly removed in the late 1700s.
Archaeologists will tell you this narrative is missing something and needs to change, and they are correct. Native American farming towns were the first in Kentucky. These farming communities dotted the river valleys and uplands of Kentucky from ~1,000 A.D. until the mid-1700s A.D. when European colonization displaced them. Archaeologists call this farming culture "Fort Ancient", based on a shared tradition of agriculture / silviculture, architecture, technology, and religious/ceremonial symbols and practices. Archaeological remains of this culture have been recorded in central and eastern Kentucky, southeast Indiana, southern Ohio, and western West Virginia. Further south and west in Kentucky was another Native American farming culture archaeologists call "Mississippian". Mississippian communities had similarities to Fort Ancient, but the two cultures are distinct enough to consider them separate. We will explore the relationship between the two cultures in a future post. There is a growing consensus among archaeologists and historians that the three Shawnee Tribes are the main, though perhaps not only, Tribal descendants of the Fort Ancient culture.
Each Fort Ancient town had a few dozen residences surrounding a central plaza with a public structure and a cemetery area. The residences ringed the plaza to make a circular community layout. Each house had a central hearth, food storage areas, and usually the front door opened toward the plaza. Sometimes the interior floor was compacted or fired clay almost like concrete. The public structure (some use the term "council house") was in the plaza, and was typically larger than residential structures. The cemetery was sometimes between the houses and the plaza, sometimes behind the houses. Some towns had wooden palisades (high walls) around the perimeter; archaeologists disagree on whether these served defensive, symbolic, or both purposes. Towns would have been surrounded by in-field crops; corn, beans and squash were the mainstays, but to***co was also cultivated. Beyond the in-fields, forest lands were managed for nut-producing tree species and, as recent archaeological studies suggest, certain tree species were likely managed for choice wood types for building. Of course, all of the visible architecture is now gone, but archaeologists can trace out the structures, plaza and cemetery using a combination of maps, geophysical survey, and excavation. Many of the major trails connecting these towns were recycled by Europeans, and many Kentucky towns/cities are on top of former Native American towns, including Augusta, Petersburg, Ashland, Irvine and others.
Today you can visit the former location of a Fort Ancient town near Dayton, OH that was excavated by archaeologists in the 1970s and a partial replica rebuilt using their studies (see https://sunwatch.org/exhibits/). The image included in this post is based on archaeological excavation of a of a Fort Ancient village in West Virginia (artist: Jim Railey; source: https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/media/31530). That work was done comply with the National Historic Preservation Act - infrastructure projects that use federal funds are required by this act to record and asses the significance of archaeological sites in advance of developing an area. Much of what we know about the Fort Ancient culture is the result of such studies, which makes the National Historic Preservation Act important for Native American history. The act also requires consultation with local historic preservation offices and federally-recognized Tribes, which gives both local residents and descendant communities a voice in the process of recording and preserving history.
You can read more about the Fort Ancient culture and see lots of great pictures in a free public educational booklet by the Kentucky Archaeological Survey here:
https://www.kentuckyarchaeologicalsurvey.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Fort-Ancient-booklet.pdf
If you want more in-depth information about Fort Ancient in Kentucky, you can read Chapter 7 of The Archaeology of Kentucky: An Update here:https://heritage.ky.gov/Documents/TheArchaeologyofKYAnUpdateVol2.pdf
