Investigations at the Robinson Site (40SM4)

Excavations at the Robinson Shell Mound site took place during the summer of 1963 and recovered more than 22,000 artifacts during what would be the first modern archaeological investigation of a shell-bearing site within the Middle Cumberland River Valley. The results of the excavations were synthesized by Morse for his 1967 PhD dissertation from the University of Michigan. In that work, Morse was one of the first to propose that the inhabitants of Robinson and similar shell-bearing sites were part of a larger regional economy based on white-tailed deer hunting, especially during winter congregations, and used shellfish as secondary resources. This discussion presents the first widelyaccessible summary of findings at the Robinson site and also presents previously unpublished data on zooarchaeology materials.