Walk in their footsteps

According to current research, indigenous people never built permanent settlements in the area around Wolf Gap. However, there is evidence humans were here thousands of years before European settlers arrived in the early 1800s. 

The “Palmer Corner Notch pp/k” projectile point pictured here was recovered from the Wolf Gap grounds during a 2019 archeological survey.

This type of projectile point is associated with the Early Archaic period, which was between 9,950 to 7,950 years before present day. That means the artifact pictured below was made by a person in this part of the world almost 8,000 years ago, and then dropped on the ground right here at Wolf Gap.

The area around Wolf Gap was not heavily populated in the centuries before the arrival of European settlers. There are no ancient villages nearby, nor signs of intensive land use. Much of central Tennessee was part of what historians and archaeologists call “The Vacant Quarter” - mostly depopulated landscapes that stretched from southern Illinois to western Alabama. Humans moved away from this region because of drought and environmental stress throughout the 1300s and 1400s. 

Additionally, Wolf Gap is far from natural amenities that would have made it an attractive site for long-term settlement: there are few fish in the spring, no significant rocky outcroppings to harvest for tool manufacturing, and few rock shelters. Hundreds of years ago most of the nearby landscape was dominated by cane and sharp local grasses.

However, despite all of this, archeologists at Wolf Gap have found evidence of small hunting parties who might have stopped here to knap new arrowheads, also finding a few pieces of pottery consistent with other communities on the Duck and Elk rivers. Based on current findings, Wolf Gap’s location was sparsely populated and temporarily inhabited for thousands of years. 

Many of the artifacts found here date from the Early Woodland period (950 B.C. - 150 B.C.). The people who occasionally camped in and around Wolf Gap might have been members of the Copena Culture. Copena peoples were found throughout northern Alabama and Tennessee. Some of the largest Copena sites are at the Oakville Mounds in nearby Lawrence County, Alabama.

Thoughts:

What kind of artifacts will you leave behind? 

Imagine every written record of Giles County was lost. What would future archaeologists be able to learn about your life from the things you owned and the tools you used?

Many prehistoric cultures are named after building materials or tool styles that members of the civilization commonly used. Come up with some ideas for what a future archaeologist might call people that lived in this part of the United States.