Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-qs9v7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T13:23:40.040Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rock Shelters as Women's Retreats: Understanding Newt Kash

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Cheryl Claassen
Cheryl Claassen*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina 28608 (claassencp@appstate.edu)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper provides a cultural context for the cache of early domesticated seeds found in Newt Kash Shelter in eastern Kentucky. Based on the abundant fibers, bedding, nuts, cradleboard, bedrock mortar, shell spoons, abundance of potential medicinal plants, infrequent fauna, and arrangement of pits, Newt Kash may have been a women's retreat place during menstruation, birthing, and sickness, and possibly the meeting place of a medicine society. There are other possible retreat shelters in this region and elsewhere.

Resumen

Resumen

Esta trabajo oferce una interpretación de las semillas domesticadas se encontraban en la cuevita Newt Kash en Kentucky, EEUU. Porque hay fibres y plantas medicinales en abundancia, cosas por ninos, cucharas en concha, no muchos huesos, y porque del arreglos de hoyos, expongo que esta lugar estaba una lugar por mujeres durante menstruación, partendo, enfermidad, y otros rituales. Hay otra lugares semejantes.

Type
Articles
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 76 , Issue 4 , October 2011 , pp. 628 - 641
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References Cited

Adair, James 1930 Adair’s History of the American Indians. Edited by Samuel Cole Williams. Promontory Press, New York.Google Scholar
Anders, Ferdinand, Jansen, Maarten, and García, Luis Reyes 1993 Los templos del cielo y de la oscuridad: oráculos y liturgia, libro explicative del llamado Códice Borgia. Fondo de Cultura Económica; Akademische Druckund Verlagsanstalt, Graz, Austria.Google Scholar
Battle, H. B. 1922 Domestic Use of Oil among the Southern Aborigines. American Anthropologist 24:171–182.Google Scholar
Boone, Rebecca 2000 Native Medicinal Plants of Shenandoah Valley. Pocahontas Press, Blacksburg, Virginia.Google Scholar
Brown, Linda 2005 Planting the Bones: Hunting Ceremonialism at Contemporary and Nineteenth-Century Shrines in the Guatemalan Highlands. Latin American Antiquity 16:131–146.Google Scholar
Carey, Heather B., McCorvie, Mary R., and Wagner, Mark J.. 2010 “A Peculiar Method” of Grinding: Examples of Indian Kettles and Hominy Holes from Southern Illinois. Paper presented at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference 2010, Lexington, Kentucky.Google Scholar
Chevalier, Jacques M., and Bain, Andres Sanchez 2003 The Hot and the Cold: Ills of Humans and Maize in Native Mexico. University of Toronto Press, Toronto.Google Scholar
Claassen, Cheryl 2001 Engendering Appalachian Archaeology. In Archaeology of the Appalachian Highlands, edited by Lynne Sullivan and Susan Prezzano, pp. 300–305. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.Google Scholar
Claassen, Cheryl 2009 Shell Symbolism in North America. In Early Human Impact on Megamolluscs, edited by Andrzej Antczak and Roberto Cipriani, pp. 37–43. BAR International Series SI865, British Archaeological Reports, Oxford.Google Scholar
Cowan, Wesley 1985 Understanding the Evolution of Plant Husbandry in Eastern North America: Lessons from Botany, Ethnography and Archaeology. In Prehistoric Food Production in North America, edited by Richard I. Ford, pp. 205–243. Anthropological Papers No. 74. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Cowan, Wesley, Jackson, Edwin, Moore, K., Nickelhoff, A., and Smart, T. 1981 The Cloudsplitter Rockshelter, Menifee County, Kentucky: A Preliminary Report. Southeastern Archaeological Conference Bulletin 24:60–75.Google Scholar
Crane, H. R. 1956 University of Michigan Radiocarbon Dates I. Science 124:664–672.Google Scholar
Dellinger, Samuel C 1936 Baby Cradles of the Ozark Bluff Dwellers. American Antiquity 1:197–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denig, Edward 1930 Indian Tales of Upper Missouri. D.C., Government Printing Office. Washington, D.C. Google Scholar
Emerson, Tom 1989 Water, Serpents, and the Underworld: An Exploration into Cahokian Symbolism. In The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex: Artifacts and Analysis, edited by Patricia Galloway, pp. 45–92. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.Google Scholar
Franke, Judith 1999 The Gift of Spider Woman. The Living Museum 61(2):6–7.Google Scholar
Franklin, Jay 2002 The Prehistory of Fentress County, Tennessee: An Archaeological Survey. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.Google Scholar
Fritz, Gayle 1994 Precolumbian Cucurbita argyrosperma ssp. argyrosperma (Cucurbitaceae) in the Eastern Woodlands of North America. Economic Botany 48:280–292.Google Scholar
Funkhouser, William, and Webb, William 1929 The So-Called Ash Caves in Lee County Kentucky. Vol 1, No 2:37–112. Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Kentucky, Lexington.Google Scholar
Funkhouser, William, and Webb, William 1930 Rock Shelters of Wolfe and Powell Counties, Kentucky. Reports in Archaeology and Anthropology, Number 4. The University of Kentucky, Lexington.Google Scholar
Furst, Jill 1995 The Natural History of the Soul in Ancient Mexico. Yale University Press, New Haven.Google Scholar
Galloway, Patricia 1997 Where Have All the Menstrual Huts Gone? The Invisibility of Menstrual Seclusion in the Late Prehistoric Southeast. In Women and Prehistory: North America and Mesoamerica, edited by Cheryl Claassen and Rosemary Joyce, pp. 47–62. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Gennep, Arnold van 1960 The Rites of Passage. University of Chicago Press. Chicago.Google Scholar
Gillespie, William 1986 Wild Foods of Appalachia. Seneca Press, Morgantown, West Virginia.Google Scholar
Gilmore, M. R. 1931 Vegetal remains of the Ozark Bluff-dweller culture. Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters 14:83–102.Google Scholar
Gremillion, Kristen 1996 Early Agricultural Diet in Eastern North America: Evidence from Two Kentucky Rockshelters. American Antiquity 61:520–536.Google Scholar
Gremillion, Kristen 1997 New Perspectives on the Paleoethnobotany of the Newt Kash Shelter. In People, Plants, and Landscapes Studies in Paleoethnobotany, edited by Kristen Gremillion, pp. 23–41. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.Google Scholar
Gremillion, Kristen 2002 Foraging Theory and Hypothesis Testing in Archaeology: An Exploration of Methodological Problems and Solutions. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 21:142–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griffin, James 1978 Volney Hurt Jones, Ethnobotanist: An Appreciation. In The Nature and Status of Ethnobotany, edited by Richard Ford, pp. 3–19. Anthropology Papers No. 67. Museum of Anthropology University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Hall, Robert 1997 An Archaeology of the Soul: North American Indian Belief and Ritual. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.Google Scholar
Hamann, Brian 1997 Weaving and the Iconography of Prestige. In Women in Prehistory, edited by Cheryl Claassen and Rosemary Joyce, pp. 153–172. University of Pennsylvania Press. Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Henson, Bart, and Martz, J. 1979 Alabama’s Aboriginal Rock Art. Alabama Historical Commission, Montgomery.Google Scholar
Herman, Mary 1950 A Reconstruction of aboriginal Delaware culture from contemporary sources. Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers 1:45–77.Google Scholar
Heyden, Doris 2005 Rites of Passage and other Ceremonies in Caves. In In the Maw of the Earth Monster: Mesoamerican Ritual Cave Use, edited by James Brady and Keith Prufer, pp. 22–28. University of Texas Press, Austin.Google Scholar
Hill, Sarah 1997 Weaving New Worlds: Southeastern Cherokee Women and Their Basketry. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Hollenbach, Kandace 2009 Foraging in the Tennessee River Valley. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.Google Scholar
Irwin, Lee 1994 The Dream Seekers: Native American Visionary Traditions of the Great Plains. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.Google Scholar
Ison, Cecil 2004 Farming, Gender, and Shifting Social Organization. In Rock Art of Eastern North America, edited by Carol Diaz-Granados and James Duncan, pp. 177–189. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.Google Scholar
Jackson, Thomas 1991 Pounding Acorn: Women’s Production as Social and Economic Focus. In Engendering Archaeology, edited by Margaret Conkey and Joan Gero, pp. 301–327. Routledge Press, London.Google Scholar
Jones, Volney 1936 The Vegetal Remains of Newt Kash Hollow Shelter. Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, Vol 3(4):147–165. University of Kentucky, Lexington.Google Scholar
Kehoe, Alice 1997 Consorting with Power, Weaving Community. Paper presented at the 62nd annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology Nashville, Tennessee.Google Scholar
Krochmal, Arnold 1984 A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants. Times Books, New York.Google Scholar
Lasiter, Mary 1946 The Textile World of the Ozark Bluff Dwellers. Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 5(3):274–277.Google Scholar
Lincoln, Bruce 1981 Emerging from the Chrysalis: Studies in Rituals of Women’s Initiation. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Jay, Miller; 1991 Delaware Personhood. Man in the Northeast 42:17–27.Google Scholar
Moyes, Holly 2005 Cluster Concentrations, Boundary Markers, and Ritual Pathways : A GIS Analysis of Artifact Cluster Patterns at Actun Tunichil Muknal, Belize. In the Maw of the Earth Monster: Mesoamerican Ritual Cave Use, edited by James Brady and Keith Prufer, pp. . University of Texas Press, Austin.Google Scholar
Schaefer, Stacy 2002 To Think with a Good Heart. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.Google Scholar
Schohn, Michelle 2001 A Lodge of Their Own: A Look at Vessel Function at a Possible Cofitachequi Women’s Lodge. Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.Google Scholar
Scholtz, Sandra 1975 Prehistoric Plies: A Structural and Comparative Analysis of Cordage, Netting, Basketry, and Fabric from Ozark Bluff Shelters. Research Series No 9, Arkansas Archaeological Survey, Fayetteville.Google Scholar
Smith, Bruce, and Cowan, Wesley 1987 Domesticated Chenopodium in Prehistoric Eastern North America: New Accelerator Dates from Eastern Kentucky. American Antiquity 52:355–357.Google Scholar
Stelle, Linville 2006 The Rock Art of the Blood of the Ancestors Grotto: Methodology: Imaging the Pictographs. Center for Social Research, Parkland College, Champaign, Illinois. Electronic document. Accessed (6/9/11). http://virtual.parkland.edu/lstellel/len/center_for_social_research/BAG/BAG_main.html Google Scholar
Sundstrom, Linea 2004 Storied Stone: Indian Rock Art of the Black Hills Country. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.Google Scholar
Swanton, John 1928 Social Organization and Social Usages of the Indians of the Creek Confederacy. U.S. Government Printing Office, 23–472. Washington, D.C. Google Scholar
Swanton, John 1966 Source Material on the History and Ethnology of the Caddo Indians. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.Google Scholar
Wallace, Anthony 1972 The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca. Vintage Books, New York.Google Scholar
Watson, Patty Jo 1985 The Impact of Early Horticulture in the Upland Drainages of the Midwest and the Midsouth. In Prehistoric Food Production in North America, edited by Richard Ford, pp. 99–147. Anthropological papers No. 75. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Webb, William S., and Funkhouser, William 1936 Rock Shelters in Menifee County, Kentucky. Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, Vol. 3, No. 4. University of Kentucky, Lexington.Google Scholar
Westbrooks, Rebecca 1989 Medicinal Plants of Western North Carolina: As Used by the Cherokee Indians. University of South Carolina, Columbia.Google Scholar
Whyte, Thomas 2005 “Human Burial in the Charles Church Rockshelter, Valle Cruris, North Carolina” in Uplands Archaeology in the East: Symposia VII, VII, & IX, edited by Carole Nash and Michael Barber, pp. 173–180. Archaeological Society of Virginia Special Publication 38–7. Richmond, Virginia.Google Scholar
Wills, W. H. 1988 Early Prehistoric Agriculture in the American South-west. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.Google Scholar