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Dow Cook

Site ID: 15La4

Village
Lawrence
Kentucky Archaeological Survey (Site photographs From the Collection of the William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology, University of Kentucky)
Unless specified, we cannot provide site location information.

Summary

​​​​​​​​​​​​​Situated along Blaine Creek, a tributary of the Big Sandy River, the Dow Cook site is a small (ca. 3 acres), circular, early Late Woodland (AD 500-800) village.  Archaeologists with Cultural Resource Analysts excavated the site in the late 1980s.  The study took place before Yatesville Lake was built. 

Sites like Dow Cook represent a shift toward more nucleated communities, as ancient Native American groups became more dependent on the foods they grew in their gardens.​​​​ This shift began around AD 500.

Lowe Flared Base spearpoints.

Findings

​Archaeologists documented a circular, 60-foot-wide habitation area (the space where day-to-day domestic activities took place) surrounding a central plaza that measured 60 feet in diameter.  Because investigators found few artifacts within the plaza, they inferred that the ancient Native residents had kept their village plaza clean. 

To learn more about the village, investigators targeted the habitation area.  They recovered large amounts of ceramics, spearpoints, and debris from chipped stone tool making and resharpening. Though researchers failed to find posthole patterns that would have indicated where a complete structure had stood, they did identify several "arcs" or lines of posts that they thought were likely portions of houses.

Archaeologists also documented hearths and cooking pits near the possible houses. They found dense concentrations of artifacts near the possible houses, too: clusters of pottery sherds, burned rock, nutting stones, and fired clay.  These concentrations were areas where ancient Native families had lived and raised their children.

Large section of a reconstructed cordmarked jar.

What's Cool?

Reconstructing a Ceramic Jar

Researchers recovered many fragments of a globular jar from a shallow pit at Dow Cook. So many, in fact, they were able to piece together a large section of it (see photos above and right).

The vessel had a flat, undecorated lip, a short neck, and a weak shoulder. No pieces​ of the jar's base were found, but contemporary vessels from other sites in the region suggest that the Dow Cook jar likely had a pointed base.  Marks from the cord-wrapped paddle used by the potter who made it were still visible on the vessel's exterior. 

Profile of the reconstructed jar.

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