The Bentley site (15Gp15) is a Late Fort Ancient culture Madisonville horizon (post 1400 CE)

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...

overlain by an 18th-century

Shawnee The Shawnee are an Algonquian-speaking indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. In the 17th century they lived in Pennsylvania, and in the 18th century they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with some bands in Kentucky a ...

village; it is located within the Lower Shawneetown Archeological District, near South Portsmouth in Greenup County, Kentucky and Lewis County, Kentucky. It was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

on April 28, 1983. It is located near four groups of Hopewell tradition mounds, built between 100 BCE and 500 CE, known as the

Portsmouth Earthworks The Portsmouth Earthworks are a large prehistoric mound complex constructed by the Native American Adena and Ohio Hopewell cultures of eastern North America (100 BCE to 500 CE). The site was one of the largest earthwork ceremonial centers const ...

Description

Buffalo style mask gorget Ohio HRoe 2010 01

The site is a village on the second flood terrace of the

Ohio River The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illino ...

, located across from the mouth of the Scioto River. 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 The Hardin Village site (15GP22) is a Fort Ancient culture Montour Phase archaeological site located on a terrace of the Ohio River near South Shore in Greenup County, Kentucky. It is located within the Big Sandy Management Area along with the ...

located up the Ohio.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.
/ref>Lee H. Hanson, ''The Hardin Village Site,'' University of Kentucky Press, 1966
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.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
/ref>

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 gorget Shell gorgets are a Native American art form of polished, carved shell pendants worn around the neck. The gorgets are frequently engraved, and are sometimes highlighted with pigments, or fenestrated (pierced with openings). Shell gorgets were mos ...

s made from the shells of marine

mollusks Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is esti ...

harvested off the coasts of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.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 Fort Ancient residents probably obtained these shells by trading salt extracted from boiled

brine Brine is a high-concentration solution of salt (NaCl) in water (H2O). In diverse contexts, ''brine'' may refer to the salt solutions ranging from about 3.5% (a typical concentration of seawater, on the lower end of that of solutions used for br ...

. Also found during the excavations were distinctive Madisonville

horizon The horizon is the apparent line that separates the surface of a celestial body from its sky when viewed from the perspective of an observer on or near the surface of the relevant body. This line divides all viewing directions based on whether i ...

pottery,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.
/ref> including cordmarked, plain and grooved-paddle jars, as well as a variety of

chert Chert () is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide (SiO2). Chert is characteristically of biological origin, but may also occur inorganically as a prec ...

points, scrapers and ceremonial pipes. 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 An earplug is a device that is inserted in the ear canal to protect the user's ears from loud noises, intrusion of water, foreign bodies, dust or excessive wind. Since they reduce the sound volume, earplugs are often used to help prevent hearing ...

, 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 Yaws is a tropical infection of the skin, bones, and joints caused by the spirochete bacterium ''Treponema pallidum pertenue''. The disease begins with a round, hard swelling of the skin, in diameter. The center may break open and form an ulce ...

or nonvenereal endemic syphilis.

Abandonment

The village was probably abandoned around 1625, possibly because of periodic flooding of the Ohio River.Andrew Lee Feight, "Lower Shawnee Town and the Flood of 1753," ''Lower Scioto Blog ,'' posted on December 24, 2007 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 Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease caused by measles virus. Symptoms usually develop 10–12 days after exposure to an infected person and last 7–10 days. Initial symptoms typically include fever, often greater than , cough, ...

smallpox Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus (often called smallpox virus) which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) c ...

, and

influenza Influenza, commonly known as "the flu", is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These symptoms ...

. Graves from this period often contain multiple burials—from four to over a hundred individuals—reflecting a sudden increase in mortality typical of epidemics. Depopulation may have been hastened by Iroquois raids during the

Beaver Wars The Beaver Wars ( moh, Tsianì kayonkwere), also known as the Iroquois Wars or the French and Iroquois Wars (french: Guerres franco-iroquoises) were a series of conflicts fought intermittently during the 17th century in North America throughout t ...

(1629-1701).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
/ref>Andrew Lee Feight, "Lower Shawnee Town and Celoron's Expedition," ''Scioto Historical,'' accessed November 22, 2020
/ref>

References

{{Registered Historic Places Fort Ancient culture Prehistoric cultures in Ohio Shawnee history Native American populated places Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Kentucky Native American history of Kentucky National Register of Historic Places in Greenup County, Kentucky National Register of Historic Places in Lewis County, Kentucky

Description

Artifacts

Abandonment

See also

References