Lyon’s Bluff Preserve, a Conservancy-owned site near Starkville, Mississippi, hosted a two-week program early last summer called Chickasaw Explorers, sponsored by the Chickasaw Nation, that introduces Chickasaw youth to the field of archaeology at an ancestral cultural site. Lyon’s Bluff Preserve is a mound site and radiocarbon dating indicates the site was occupied continuously from about A.D. 1200 to 1650, and then reoccupied in the early 1800s. Past excavations and geophysics have revealed a palisade trench that encircles the main part of the site that contains about three acres of dense village areas and a single mound. The palisade had at least one four-sided bastion.
Under the direction of Mississippi State University archaeologist Tony Boudreaux, graduate assistants, and Chickasaw Homeland Affairs staff, 10 Chickasaw Explorers spent several days excavating units strategically selected to uncover portions of the palisade. In addition to evidence of two different palisade wall trenches, the group recovered charred plant remains to be radiocarbon dated, and gathered ceramic, lithic, faunal, and botanical data.
Members of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma visited the site during the program to give participants a stickball demonstration and help them participate in traditional stomp dancing. Lyons Bluff is an ancestral site for Chickasaws, Choctaws, and other southeastern tribes. “We believe this was the largest reunion of Chickasaws and Choctaws at the ancestral Lyon’s Bluff mound site in at least 500 years,” said Chickasaw Nation archaeologist Brad Lieb. The Conservancy plans to host the Chickasaw Explorers again this summer.
