Who lived here 4,000 years ago? Highlands' mountains hold clues by james jacenich • staff writer
MONTEREY -This year Virginia celebrates 400 years of English habitation with the commemoration of the founding of Jamestown. But the English were not the only people here. When they came to Virginia in 1607, they found the land already inhabited.
Much is known about the first contact between American Indians and Europeans, especially in the coastal region of Virginia. But by the time settlers moved here into the Highlands, few native people were still in the area.
Artifacts found in excavations in Highland and Bath counties prove people lived here thousands of years before the coming of the Europeans. But who they were remains a mystery.
Professor Carole Nash, who holds a master's degree in environmental anthropology and teaches geography at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, hopes to shed some light on the early inhabitants of the Highlands, an area that covers Highland, Bath and Augusta counties.
At last Thursday's meeting of the Highlands Chapter of the Archeological Society of Virginia she told the group, "Indians were here and still came through the area as late as the French and Indian War."
The literature on early excavations is limited. Burial mounds were described in Highland in the 1860s.
After the Civil War, "Harper's Monthly" described American Indian burial mounds in Highland County.
Gerard Fowke of the Smithsonian explored the James and Potomac River valleys and published a study on mounds that he visited or excavated in 1894.
An American Indian burial mound was identified south of Monterey in 1936. It was 130 feet in circumference and covered with rock.
But now, all known mounds have been flattened and are buried under generations of European-style habitation and agriculture.
Nash said over 900 Native American sites have been identified in Bath County - mostly due to archaeological impact studies conducted prior to large building projects such as the Gaithright Dam, the Bath county Pumped Storage Station, and Lake Moomaw which uncovered sites - but Highland has less than 100 recorded to date.
Virginia has two Paleoindian sites recorded. The Paleoindian period dates between 15,000 B.C.and 8,500 B.C.
The earliest date is a hotly debated topic, said Nash. What is known is that an ice sheet came down almost as far as Highland County during that time. "This was a very different place," said Nash. The highest elevations of the Alleghenies were tundra. The valley floor had grassland and taiga (boreal forest associated with long, severe winters and short summers). It would have been like present-day northern Canada. "This was a cold place," said Nash.
People would have lived in wigwams like the Inuit of northern Canada did in summer. The wigwam is a rounded, tent-like structure.
The lack of evidence about early inhabitants in Highland County may simply be due to a lack of research. "We have not looked in the mountains for sites," she said. "We assumed people traveled the river valleys."
It is an assumption that is being challenged by Nash and others.
Mike Wilke, president of the Archeological Society of Virginia, and Highland's local chapter president, has been involved with investigations of some local American Indian sites and has several artifacts that indicate people traveled through the area long before European settlement - people who used stone tools.
Paleolithic people elsewhere are believed to have been hunters of mammoth, caribou and elk and used spears fitted with stone Clovis points. Clovis points have not been documented in Highland, though they are found all across America. But other types of stone points and blades have been found here. Wilke says people began to abandon the use of stone tools when European settlers introduced metals in the 16th and 17th centuries.
"You are living in an area of beautiful lithic resources," said Nash. A variety of types of stone were used to manufacture spear points, so ancient hunters would have had a ready supply of the stone they needed to finish their weapons.
Wilke knows of several places in Highland hunters could have used to replenish their supply of stone tools and projectile points. One is along Davis Run near McDowell. Rainfall and flooding have caused stone from a quartzite outcropping on the top of Jack Mountain to travel down the creek.
The Archaic period, 8,500-1,000 years ago, probably brought people into the Highlands in search of game. There would also have been an abundance of seasonal resources here. The climate gradually warmed, a process that took several thousand years, versus the rapid warming happening today, Nash said.
"I think the Blue Grass Valley is one of the places you are going to see Archaic sites because the mountains ascend in benchlike steps," said Nash.
The Blue Ridge model used by scientists postulates a base camp from which hunters go higher in search of game and to mine quartz quarries on mountain ridges and outcroppings.
Highland was an upland flood plain then. There may have been sedentary camps in rock shelters that were used as hunting stations.
Hunting technology was also changing. By 8,000 years ago, Atlatl spear-throwers, commonly known today by the Aztec word atlatl, were introduced.
Fishing was also practiced at least 4,500 years ago. Ceramics became popular around 3,000 years ago. Pottery types found in the Highlands originated in the Piedmont area of Virginia. "Was it because of trade?" Nash asked. "We are still trying to understand this."
The Woodland period lasted from 1,000 B.C. to 1580 A.D. People lived in small, dispersed hamlets and were hunting, gathering and growing maize and squash.
By 1,800 years ago, the bow and arrow began its 700-year phase-in, replacing earlier Atlatl technology. Where the Atlatl required a group of hunters working as a team, the bow and arrow enabled individual hunting.
Nash believes competition among young men trying to work their way up through the ranks began to change the way American Indian society was organized. Burial sites in Highland and Bath counties date back to between 2,200 and 1,600 years ago, said Nash.
The diet of the Woodland people included walnuts, maize, squash and beans. By the end of the Woodland period people were becoming farmers first, hunters and gatherers second. They hunted white-tailed deer, turkey, and the box turtle.
"People were well-connected then," said Nash. Communication and travel between the people and places was becoming commonplace.
"The Valley Road was a major trail," she said. Later, German and Scotch-Irish settlers would follow the same American Indian trail down from Pennsylvania to North Carolina by way of the Shenandoah Valley as they sought places to settle. "I would not be surprised if people here in 1607 knew what was going on in Jamestown," said Nash.
She said another area that needs more study is the influence of Spanish and French visitors on early Virginia. In Saltville there was a report of a European-Indian marriage as early as 1570, and the French could have come in from the west.
Were the people who lived here of the southeast or the northeast? That still remains unanswered.
Perhaps the answer lies in the many caves of Bath and Highland counties. A dark part of a cave on Bath County forest service land contains glyphs carved in mud, probably from the Woodland era.
The only other place they are found outside of southwest Virginia is in caves in the Tennessee Valley.
The search for historical and prehistoric artifacts of humans living in the Highlands continues. Those interested in becoming part of the search can find people with similar interests by joining the local chapter of the ASV.
The HCASV meets at the Highland County Public Library in Monterey bimonthly on the second Thursday at 7 p.m. Wilke can be reached at (540) 499-2573.
The ASV has extensive listings of volunteer opportunities for those interested in exploring the state's archaeology. Its Web site is: asv-archeology.org.
Research is ongoing in Highland and Bath counties. An additional source for further information is James Madison University.
Nash can be reached at the geographic science program under the department of integrated science at JMU, (540) 568-6805.
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