Pre-Mississippian Sedentary Settlements in the Tennessee River Valley? Evaluating the Molluscan Evidence from a Freshwater Mussel Shell Mound

The role of sedentary settlements in precontact North America has been a topic of great interest and debate among archaeologists. Recent studies investigating sedentariness have employed various seasonal and paleoenvironmental data, including from mollusks. Here we focus on terrestrial gastropods recovered, and reported on in 1942, by Morrison from the Bluff Creek site (LuO59), in northwestern Alabama. As many land snails vary in their preferred habitats, changes in species composition by depth within a site can point to environmental impacts (from Native land-use practices) as possible indicators of sedentariness. Though analysis of Morrison's snail data does not clearly show this relationship, it does reemphasize the importance of sampling and recovery methods when dealing with gastropods and the need for further utilization of these types of data, especially in understanding paleoenvironments and formation processes.