Kenimer Site
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The Kenimer site (9Wh68) is an
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 ...
near Sautee Nacoochee, Georgia in White County. The site contains two earthwork mounds located on top of a natural hilltop.


Site description

The Kenimer site is located on an erosional remnant hill just to the north of and overlooking the Nacoochee Valley. It overlooks the junction of the
Chattahoochee River The Chattahoochee River forms the southern half of the Alabama and Georgia border, as well as a portion of the Florida - Georgia border. It is a tributary of the Apalachicola River, a relatively short river formed by the confluence of the Chatta ...
and Sautee Creek, which is about to the southeast. Mound A, the largest of the site's two mounds is above the level of the flood plain of the rivers and approximately above sea level. Georgia State Route 17 is positioned to the north of Mound A. Because the mounds are located on an irregularly shaped natural hill their exact dimensions are hard to determine and vary from side to side. The summit of Mound A is approximately square. On its high northeastern side, it is more than in height, and, on its western side adjacent to Mound B, it is in height. Mound B is located to the west of Mound A and is oriented with both mounds' northwestern edges in a straight line. The summit is approximately square. The elevation varies on each side but is generally not much over in height. The fact that the site is located on top of and utilizes an existing natural hill as part of its bulk is unusual. Another well known example of this in southeastern US archaeology is the
Emerald Mound The Emerald Mound site ( 22 AD 504), also known as the '' Selsertown site'', is a Plaquemine culture Mississippian period archaeological site located on the Natchez Trace Parkway near Stanton, Mississippi, United States. The site dates from the ...
located near
Natchez, Mississippi Natchez ( ) is the county seat of and only city in Adams County, Mississippi, United States. Natchez has a total population of 14,520 (as of the 2020 census). Located on the Mississippi River across from Vidalia in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, N ...
.


Excavations

The site was mapped and test excavations were performed in the summer of 1997 under the direction of Mark Williams as part of the Archaeology Field School of the Department of Anthropology for the
University of Georgia , mottoeng = "To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.""To serve" was later added to the motto without changing the seal; the Latin motto directly translates as "To teach and to inquire into the nature of things." , establ ...
. Researchers found minimal debris from human habitation at the mounds, leading the archaeologists to conclude the site was used only for a short time and probably for ceremonial purposes since the surrounding topography would make it hard to have a village site adjacent to the mounds. Because of its unique features, it is possible the site was constructed to resemble the platform mounds of the Macon Plateau area, such as Ocmulgee site, located roughly to the south by peoples "that did not understand the construction history or social/religious context of such features." Some
pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and por ...
and lithic debris were found at the site. All the ceramic pottery sherds found at the site dated to the Late Woodland period Napier Phase, circa 900 CE. The lithic debris found at the site was all locally available quartz and Ridge and Valley
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 ...
from the northwestern Georgia area. A small greenstone
celt The Celts (, see pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples () are. "CELTS location: Greater Europe time period: Second millennium B.C.E. to present ancestry: Celtic a collection of Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancient ...
was found during a posthole test on the summit of Mound A. Napier phase ceramics were defined by archaeologists Jesse D. Jennings and
Charles H. Fairbanks Charles Herron Fairbanks (June 3, 1913 – July 17, 1984) was an archaeologist/anthropologist. He conducted archaeology at the Ocmulgee National Monument in Macon, Georgia where he developed rigorous, painstaking field methodology. His 1967–196 ...
, who studied
Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park (formerly Ocmulgee National Monument) in Macon, Georgia, United States preserves traces of over ten millennia of culture from the Native Americans in the Southeastern Woodlands. Its chief remains are majo ...
. Named for the
Napier site Napier may refer to: People * Napier (surname), including a list of people with that name * Napier baronets, five baronetcies and lists of the title holders Given name * Napier Shaw (1854–1945), British meteorologist * Napier Waller (1893–1 ...
, near present-day
Macon, Georgia Macon ( ), officially Macon–Bibb County, is a consolidated city-county in the U.S. state of Georgia. Situated near the fall line of the Ocmulgee River, it is located southeast of Atlanta and lies near the geographic center of the state of Geo ...
, Napier Complicated Stamped ceramics are found in north-central Georgia between the Chattoochee, Oconee, and Flint rivers. This Late Woodland to early Mississippian period–pottery was tempered with grit.


Controversy

In December 2011, architect Richard Thornton writing for the content farm
Examiner.com Examiner.com was an American news website based in Denver, Colorado, that operated using a network of " pro-am contributors"' for content. It had various local editions with contributors posting city-based items tailored to 238 markets throughou ...
claimed that the mound was of
Mayan Mayan most commonly refers to: * Maya peoples, various indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica and northern Central America * Maya civilization, pre-Columbian culture of Mesoamerica and northern Central America * Mayan languages, language family spoken ...
origin. Mark Williams, an archaeologist at the University of Georgia who has spent three days surface collecting at the site, wrote, "The Maya connection to legitimate Georgia archaeology is a wild and unsubstantiated guess on the part of the Thornton fellow. No archaeologists will defend this flight of fancy" and via his Facebook page: "This is total and complete bunk," and "There is no evidence of Maya in Georgia." In 2010, archaeologist Johannes Loubser wrote in a
peer-reviewed journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and d ...
article that the excavations at the
Track Rock Track Rock is located in the Track Rock Gap Archaeological Area (9Un367) in the Brasstown Ranger District of the Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. This area contains preserved petroglyphs of ancient Indigenous peopl ...
archaeological site on the opposite side of the mountain from the Kenimer site had been halted when graves had been discovered, and the site was probably
precontact In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the Migration to the New World, original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization of the Americas, European colonization, w ...
. Thornton used excavations performed by Loubser as "evidence" for his theory. Upon learning this, Loubser responded, "I think that
hornton Hornton is a village and civil parish about northwest of Banbury in Oxfordshire. Churches The oldest parts of the Church of England parish church of Saint John the Baptist are the nave and the arcade of the north aisle, both of which were bu ...
selectively presents the evidence. ... But he's a better marketer than I and other archaeologists are. When you make a claim like that, you have to back it up with hard evidence. There's a lot of opinion out there."


See also

* List of Mississippian sites *
Dyar site The Dyar site ( 9GE5) is an archaeological site in Greene County, Georgia, in the north central Piedmont physiographical region. The site covers an area of 2.5 hectares. It was inhabited almost continuously from 1100 to 1600 by a local variation of ...
* Joe Bell site * Mandeville site *
Nacoochee Mound The Nacoochee Mound (Smithsonian trinomial 9WH3) is an archaeological site on the banks of the Chattahoochee River in White County, in the northeast part of the U.S. state of Georgia. Georgia State Route 17 and Georgia State Route 75 have a ju ...


External links


Muscogee Creek Nation and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians historic preservation specialists debunk the Mayan myth


References

{{Late Woodland cultures Archaeological sites in Georgia (U.S. state) Mounds in Georgia (U.S. state)