Abstract
FOR some little time evidence has been accumulating which points to Bedford County, in southwestern Virginia, as a place of early settlement of stone-using aboriginal tribes of nomadic hunters. During proto-historic and early historic times, Siouian and Iroquoian tribes appear to have lived within the present bounds of the county; while the Cherokee in the earlier half of the nineteenth century still retained the memory of an old tradition that a Cherokee village once stood near the twin Peaks of Otter in the north-west of the county where it is crossed by the Blue Ridge. These peaks were formerly thought to be possibly among the highest of the northern continent; and it is believed that the region around had been occupied for many centuries by a succession of tribes of different stocks, ever since the time when nomadic bands first entered the wilderness. This belief has now received the support of recent discovery in the form of stone implements of an early type on a site, now known as the Mons site, which was revealed early in 1940 in road-making operations in the vicinity of the Peaks of Otter. In a description of the site and finds by David I. Bushnell, jun. (Smithsonian Miscell. Collect., 99, 15; 1940) it is recorded that stone artefacts, fragments of steatite vessels and small bits of earthenware were exposed during removal of the top soil. Although some specimens were obviously older than others, no determination of age was possible in the absence of stratification. Nor was it possible to mark the extent of the settlement; but quantities of flakes of various types and fractured pebbles indicated the existence of a workshop. The types of artefact included flake-knives and scrapers, projectile points, several forms of edged implements, axe-like implements, hammerstones and possibly pestles. Two Folsom points have been found on the site mingled with the other material.
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Early Man in Virginia. Nature 147, 476–477 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/147476c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/147476c0