JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (AP) - An East Tennessee State University professor has been awarded a grant that will help him study a prehistoric shelter where primitive stone tools were found.
Anthropology professor Jay Franklin told the Johnson City Press (https://bit.ly/1cG5Sb4) that he will lead a group that will study the location in the Upper Cumberland Plateau during the warm months. He says they will be trying to learn more about the lives of early Americans.
Franklin says the $12,000 grant from the National Geographic/Waitt Grant Program will fund mapping, travel and radiocarbon testing.
Because the shelter is relatively undisturbed by amateur diggers, he said it could hold very valuable information.
The finds in the shelter so far are representative of tools that were used about 11,000 years ago.
Another interesting fact is that it has a higher elevation and a further distance from water than other shelters from the same era.
“It’s not that uncommon to find a Paleolithic site in North America, but what I think is interesting is this site is higher in elevation, it’s a thousand feet higher than the valley beneath it,” he said. “Most of the earliest sites in the Americas you find in the lowlands, along major rivers. Nothing about it fits what we know about early Americans.”
He said researchers would study how the shelter has been used through the ages.
“We’ll be interested in learning how it was used in each period,” he said. “Was it used as hunting camps? Was it residential? What made them come up there in this highland area so early in time, when it would have been fairly inhospitable?”
Franklin said such a pristine site is a rare find.
“For 18 years I’ve been working in the area, and I thought I wouldn’t find rock shelter like this,” he said. “It makes me glad I stuck with it this long.”
___
Information from: Johnson City Press, https://www.johnsoncitypress.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.