Following Funkhouser and Webb:

Revisiting the Central Park Mounds, Ashland, Kentucky

Matthew Davidson, PhD

photo credit: Janet Holbrook
Presentation Goals

• Introduction
• Broad Overview
• Study goals/methods
• Study area background
• Results
• Discussion
 Acknowledgements
Volunteers and Partners Archaeologists

-Charles and Janet Holbrook -Jason Flay, M.A.

-City of Ashland: food, equipment, 14C dates
-Dwight Cropper
-University of Kentucky: OSA, affiliation 14C dates
-Fieldwork Volunteers -Renee Bonzani, Ph.D.
-Ashland/Boyd County Library -Susan Neumeyer, M.A.
Background to Mounds & Earthworks
in the Central Ohio Valley
 Temporal Context

HUNTING AND GATHERING GARDENING

FARMING
 Late-18th to late-19th Century: Myth of the Moundbuilder “Race”

MYTH

*claim that
vanished “race”
built the mounds,
not ancestors of
extant Native
Americans

*Convenient
Justification for
European
Colonization

*selective/biased
use of data
interesting
parallel to
Morton’s use of
cranial data

Figure:
1788 Putnam
Ohio Company
Land speculators
for Northwest
Territory
 Late-19th Century:
Deconstructing Moundbuilder Myth

Bureau of American Ethnology

Surveys & Excavations

Lynott 2014:5,87
Early to Mid-20th Century: Early Modern Archaeology
University of Kentucky - Webb & Funkhouser

Adena people
Great Depression –
New Deal Relief
1934-1942

*Excavated many mounds

*Data used to refine Adena

*Collections at WSWMA

Earthworks
Cross-section
 Mid-Late-20th Century
Chronology Building & Data Accumulation

• Refinement of Adena-Hopewell
• Radiocarbon dating
• Museum studies of early excavations
 1990s to present:
Refinement and Sythesis

• Household Archaeology
• AMS dating
• Geophysical Survey
– Rediscovery and detailed site mapping
• Geochemistry
– Trade patterns
• Continued use of museum collections
• Still need basic survey data for most sites
 Example 1: Hopeton Work
Scioto Valley, Ross County,OH
 Study Area & Background Research

• Location
– Northeast Kentucky
– central Appalachia
• sources
– Published literature
– Dissertations/theses
– OSA site files
 Broad
Patterns
*95 mound sites/ 141 mounds

*Drainage Distribution/ Groups

territories?
interregional conduit

*most destroyed or disturbed

*age of only 10% known

*2,500 years of construction/use

7 Early Woodland
7 Middle Woodland
4 Late Woodland
6 Fort Ancient
1 Contact Period
 Portsmouth Earthworks

Group B

B
Group A

Group C

A
D C

Group D
Ashland Cluster – Largest Group in KY

FIGURE: WEBB/FUNK MAP OF ASHLAND MOUNDS

“Great Hopewell Road”
Central Park Mounds Background
 Image courtesy Ashland/Boyd County Library

1870s-1890s
1st race track
Fair grounds
Central Park Area on 1877 Hayes Atlas
 2nd race track
1890s-1920s Fair grounds
Crabbe Elementary
• New track
• Chattin drive

Sanborn
maps
 1920s-present

• 1928 engineering plan

LiDAR with historic features
 Archaeological Background
• 1850s park established

• 1870s-1890s mounds exc.

• 1928 first map

• 1931 site recorded W/F

• 1972 NRHP listing

Research History Image courtesy WSWMA
 Current Site Information

Current site extent atBurial

osa Mounds

Probably Early Woodland “Adena”

 Goals
Methods

Playground

Site Extent
monitoring
stratigraphy
Native American Component

Results

-1 to 2’ deep

-50 artifacts

-well preserved

-carbon 14 dates
 Native artifact assemblage
Stone tool maintenance
Thermal features
Food processing
 *2 samples to NOSAMS
*Contexts 100m apart
Radiocarbon *From intact deposits
*shagbark hickory (1)
Dates SAMPLE 1 BCE 1127-1013 CAL 2 SIGMA

SAMPLE 2 BCE 899-815 CAL 2 SIGMA

AGE OF OPEN SITE :

2,800-3,100 yo

AGE OF MOUNDS:
2000-2500 yo??
American - Historic Period (1850-present)
Results
-0 to 1’ deep
-140 artifacts
-1850s-present
-multiple uses
 Summary & Future Research
Native American component
• Open Site age
• Function
• Relation to mounds
FUTURE:
expand PhI, PHII, geophys
Smithsonian collections

American component
• Mixed 20th c
• Buried track remnant
FUTURE: same, archival res.
Recommendations to City
*preservation*
|
disturbance
|
trees

*restoration*
|
court/swings
|
sidewalk/fence

*studies*
|
Smithsonian
|
ABPP Grant?

*interpretation*
|
signage/tour
|
Highlands?
Discussion