by Paul A. Delcourt, Hazel R. Delcourt, Cecil R. Ison,

William E. Sharp, and A. Gwynn Henderson

Kentucky Archaeological Survey (jointly administered by the

Kentucky Heritage Council and the University of Kentucky

Department of Anthropology)

Education Series

Number Four 

Lexington, Kentucky

1999

Prepared in cooperation

with the U.S. Department

of Agriculture,

Forest Service

JACKSON COUNTY, KENTUCKY
IN OCTOBER 1996, the Daniel Boone National Forest brought a team of 

paleoecologists, Dr. Paul A. Delcourt and Dr. Hazel R. Delcourt of the Department 

of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to 

Cliff Palace Pond to study the history of fire and its effects on the forest. Their goal 

was to determine the long-term changes the forest had undergone as a result of 

changes in climate, forest disturbance regimes, and prehistoric human activities. Cliff 

Palace Pond was chosen because (1) it was located on a ridge crest where it would 

reflect changes from only a small area; (2) it was situated adjacent to a variety of 

archaeological sites; and (3) it had good potential for containing a long and wellpreserved pollen and charcoal record.

IT DID NOT DISAPPOINT. From a little over five feet of organic pond sediments, 

Cliff Palace Pond produced a nearly 10,000 year-long pollen record. This record 

clearly documents the influence prehistoric peoples had on the forest through their 

use of fire. The Cliff Palace Pond story challenges forever our view of the “virgin” 

forest primeval.

THE INFORMATION PRESENTED in this booklet draws on the results of forest fire 

ecology studies in general; research at Cliff Palace Pond and the archaeological sites at 

Keener Point Knob in particular; and the decades of archaeological research carried 

out and supported by the Daniel Boone National Forest.

THE PREPARATION OF THIS BOOKLET would not have been possible without the 

enthusiastic and logistic support of Dan Olsen and Rex Mann. Our sincere thanks 

go to our friends John MacGregor, who assisted in the coring fieldwork, and Kristen 

Gremillion, Ed Buckner, Bill Martin, Julian Campbell, and both Carol and Jerry 

Baskin. All graciously shared their knowledge of prehistoric Kentucky peoples and 

of the rich natural heritage of plant communities arrayed along the Cumberland 

Plateau. Thanks also go to Jerry Baskin, Dan Davis, David Pollack, Eric Schlarb, Carl 

Sheilds, Kary Stackelbeck, David Taylor, and Phred the ‘Possum for their editorial 

comments. We especially thank Gwen Hensley, who beautifully designed and laid 

out this booklet in the twinkling of an eye.

ILLUSTRATIONS: Tree and pollen illustrations were adapted from Donald C. Peattie,

A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America, Houghton Mifflin, 

Boston, 1950 and Ronald O. Kapp, How to Know Pollen and Spores, Wm. C. Brown 

Co., Dubuque, IO. Prehistoric artifacts and lifeways scenes were taken from the 

Kentucky Heritage Council’s Kentucky Before Boone poster. The figure on page 15 was 

adapted from William H. Cottrell, Jr., The Book of Fire, Mountain Press, Missoula 

MT, 1989. Photographs on pages 1, 4 and 25 are used courtesy of Warren E. Brunner; 

other photographs are from the Daniel Boone National Forest collection.

COVER ILLUSTRATION: Photograph of Cliff Palace Pond by Warren E. Brunner, and 

petroglyph design pecked into a rock at Cliff Palace Cave by an unknown artist from 

Kentucky’s past.

This publication was funded, in part, by a U.S. Forest Service Challenge Grant.

Copyright 1999 Kentucky Heritage Council
“Is that it? Is that all there is to it?” 

After you’ve traveled deep into the 

woods and hiked up the steep trail to 

Keener Point Knob, that’s likely to be 

your first thought as you stand at the 

edge of Cliff Palace Pond. And yet, 

contained within this small pond and 

the nearby sandstone rockshelters is 

the record of nearly 10,000 years of 

environmental and human history. 

Keener Point Knob is an isolated, 

flat-lying plateau remnant located in 

northeastern Jackson County. This 

part of Eastern Kentucky is a region 

of narrow ridges and steep cliffs. The 

ridges and cliffs are made of sandstone, 

but their lower slopes are underlain by 

shales and limestones. Small tributaries 

of Station Camp Creek, itself a 

tributary to the Kentucky River, flank 

the Knob. They flow in narrow valleys 

far below the ridge crest.

The tiny pond is nestled within 

a small depression near the Knob’s 

western edge. It sits in a young, mainly 

hardwood forest and is surrounded 

by a mat of sphagnum moss. A sparse 

thicket of buttonbush shrubs grows 

throughout its shallow basin. It looks 

unkempt and wild. 

If you visit the pond in late winter or 

spring, its dark waters are no more than 

about two feet deep. They cover an 

area that measures only 50 by 100 feet. 

Should you return in the fall when the 

water level is lowest, Cliff Palace Pond 

will look like a small soggy depression, 

having shrunk to less than 20 by 50 feet 

in the intervening dry months.

Scientists discuss their research near the edge of Cliff Palace Pond.

FORESTS, FOREST FIRES, & THEIR MAKERS: THE STORY OF CLIFF PALACE POND 1
2 FORESTS, FOREST FIRES, & THEIR MAKERS 

The little pond is too small to fish 

in and often too shallow and muddy 

to drink from. So at first glance, it may 

appear to you to be good only as a 

home for frogs, marbled salamanders, 

crawdads, and water-loving bog plants. 

But to the trained eyes of paleoecologists (scientists who study past 

environments), Cliff Palace Pond is a 

tiny window through which they can 

peer back thousands of years into the 

past.

The pond muck is the key. Like 

many ponds, pieces of the plants and 

animals that live around Cliff Palace 

Pond fall into it or drift in and settle 

onto its watery surface. Over time, 

these bits of organic debris build up 

as layers of muck on the bottom of 

the pond. This muck is made up of 

decomposed leaves and branches from 

nearby trees blown in during a summer 

thunderstorm. It contains seeds and 

stems that fell gently into it from the 

plants growing along its edge, as well as 

the dead bodies of frogs and crawdads 

that lived within it. Tiny wind-blown 

particles that land on the pond surface, 

such as dust, tree pollen, and charcoal 

ash from forest fires, also eventually 

settle into the pond’s mucky bottom. 

Depending on how long ago it formed, 

undisturbed pond muck can record the 

events of hundreds or even thousands 

of years.

The muck on the bottom of Cliff 

Palace Pond records almost 10,000 

years of environmental and fire history. 

But it does so on a local scale. This 

is because the pond receives organic 

debris from a very small area (around 

1.2 acres) that is fed by rainfall runoff 

alone. Most of the air-borne pollen and 

charcoal particles that settle into it are 

carried by winds from the immediately 

surrounding trees and plants growing 

on Keener Point Knob and on the 

upper slopes of the adjacent steep-sided 

stream and creek valleys (a little over a 

half-mile radius).

Why, then, is this place so rare 

and special? It isn’t just because of the 

environmental changes recorded in 

the pond sediments. Scientists have 

collected similar information from 

prehistoric soils in dry rockshelters 

elsewhere in Eastern Kentucky. 

It is unique because local 

environmental changes and 

forest fire history recorded 

in the pond sediments can 

be linked to local changes in 

human culture recorded in nearby 

rockshelters.

Cliffs containing rockshelters 

surround Keener Point Knob.

A prehistoric campsite and 

Cliff Palace Pond are

located on its crest.
THE STORY OF CLIFF PALACE POND 3

A combination of 

slope, elevation, and 

exposure (whether 

north or south facing) 

creates a diversity of 

environmental zones 

at Keener Point Knob.

People lived near Cliff Palace Pond 

for thousands of years. They camped 

for short periods on the crest of the 

Knob next to the pond. At one time 

or another, they also lived in most of 

the rockshelters present in the steep 

sandstone clifflines that follow the edge 

of the Knob.

Over the centuries, human lifeways 

underwent many changes at Keener 

Point Knob. People turned from 

hunting and gathering to gardening, 

and then later to farming as a way 

of life. As their culture changed, 

the peoples’ relationship with their 

environment changed, too. They 

came to see it as something they could 

manipulate to suit their needs. Fire was 

one of the most important tools they 

used.

Because the pond and the places 

where prehistoric peoples once lived 

are located so close to one another, 

Cliff Palace Pond’s sediments can 

provide insights into the dynamic 

interaction between people, fire, and 

the environment. Most importantly, the 

scale at which prehistoric people used 

fire to manipulate their environment 

matches the scale at which Cliff 

Palace Pond has faithfully recorded 

that manipulation. It is reflected by 

dramatic changes in fossil pollen and 

charcoal over time.
4 FORESTS, FOREST FIRES, & THEIR MAKERS 

Rockshelters, much 

like this 

one, served 

as homes 

for people 

throughout 

prehistory.

The Cliff Palace Pond story begins 

almost 10,000 years ago. It starts with 

the pond’s formation in a red spruce 

and northern white cedar forest, and 

the appearance of people, whom 

archaeologists call the Early Archaic 

peoples. Other peoples and other 

forests followed: the Middle and Late 

Archaic peoples and their oak, hemlock, 

and sugar maple forest; the Woodland 

and Fort Ancient peoples and their 

pine, oak, walnut, and chestnut forests; 

and the peoples of European and 

African descent and their oak, maple, 

black gum, and pine forests.

Despite such an early beginning, 

other forests and other people lived in 

the Eastern Kentucky mountains for at 

least 2,000 years before our story opens. 

These forests were made up of spruce 

and jack pine trees. And the people, 

ancestors of Early Archaic groups, were 

Ice Age hunters who were the first 

people to arrive in Jackson County.

Today, we are the people in the 

Cliff Palace Pond story, and the forests 

are the ones the U.S. Forest Service 

manages. The story is not complete, 

though. The next chapters have yet to 

be written. 

The Cliff Palace Pond story is a 

fascinating one. It describes changes 

in the natural environment and 

changes in peoples’ lifeways. It shows 

how people increasingly manipulated 

the environment to suit their needs 

through the use of fire. But most 

importantly, this story destroys forever 

our notion of a “virgin,” pristine forest 

primeval, untouched by human hands.

Before we turn to the story itself, 

however, we need to understand how 

it came to be written. This means 

finding out how paleoecologists and 

archaeologists collected and studied 

the information on which the story is 

based.
THE STORY OF CLIFF PALACE POND

The Cliff Palace Pond story is not 

a simple one, and telling it is 

not easy. Paleoecologists and 

archaeologists must weave 

together information from 

many different sources.

Other scientists collected 

some of this information. This 

includes facts like how forest 

fires behave under certain 

conditions; the kind of 

climate particular plants 

thrive in; and the activities 

of men and women in 

hunting and gathering 

societies. The paleoecologists 

and archaeologists collected the 

rest of the information from 

their own research and 

analysis.

Paleoecologists 

study microscopic 

objects. To reconstruct 

the environmental and fire 

history of Cliff Palace Pond, 

they examined tiny fossil pollen 

grains, visible only with a 

microscope, and equally small 

particles of charcoal ash.

Trees and other plants 

produce pollen grains 

or “flower dust” in 

large quantities every 

growing season. The 

wind scatters the pollen 

over the forest, fertilizing 

flowers or cones. In 

this way, seed is set for 

the next generation of 

5

Scientists relied on

information from tree 

pollen, spearpoints, and 

charcoal from fires to

tell the Cliff Palace Pond 

story.

plants. Forest fires produce charcoal ash 

particles of many different sizes. Pollen 

grains from the forest and charcoal 

particles produced in a forest fire 

during the same year will be 

deposited together in pond 

sediments. Thus, they record 

the environmental changes 

and fire events that take place 

throughout the lifetime of a 

forest.

Paleoecologists can identify 

the types of pollen shed 

by trees found in Jackson 

County forests based on 

differences in shape, size, and 

the number of circular pores

or elongate furrows in the outer 

walls of each pollen grain. They 

can learn about the character and 

intensity of past fires from variation 

in charcoal particle size.

The paleoecologists’ job is 

to read and interpret the tree 

pollen record and the record of 

forest fire charcoal ash preserved 

within the pond sediments. 
6 FORESTS, FOREST FIRES, & THEIR MAKERS 

Paleoecologists recorded seven 

layers of pond sediment, 

based on differences in soil 

color and texture.

How do they begin? By taking small, 

pea-sized samples from the pond’s 

sediments.

The samples must be collected 

carefully. At Cliff Palace Pond, a 

paleoecologist and several 

assistants waded out into the 

pond near its center, where 

the muck was thickest. They 

pushed a long metal coring 

tube, about a yard long and 

two inches in diameter, into 

the pond sediments. This 

removed a cylinder of mud, 

called a mud core, from the 

muck. The full coring tube 

was passed hand-over-hand to 

another paleoecologist, who 

laid it carefully on a plastic 

sheet spread out on the ground 

nearby. She pushed the mud 

core, which measured a little 

over three feet in length, out 

of the coring tube. Then she 

recorded the color and texture 

of the pond mud. Finally, 

she labeled and wrapped the 

mud core in aluminum foil to 

prevent it from drying-out and 

becoming contaminated.

The researchers repeated 

these steps, coring deeper each 

time in the same hole. They 

stopped when they struck the 

sandstone bottom of the pond. 

In all, they had cored about 

five feet below the surface.

The paleoecologists took 

the cores of ancient mud back 

to the laboratory for analysis. 

There, they processed 32 small 

samples of pond sediment 

taken from the cores using a series of 

strong acids. In this way, most of the 

other materials were dissolved away. 

This left the acid-resistant fossil pollen 

grains and the charcoal particles for 

them to study.

The paleoecologists placed 

a drop of pollen-and-charcoalrich liquid on a glass slide. 

They looked at it under a 

microscope that magnified the 

particles 480 times their normal 

size. This made it easier to 

identify and count the number 

of pollen grains for each tree 

species and the number of 

charcoal particles of various 

sizes. By plotting on diagrams 

the results from a series of 

samples taken from throughout 

the length of the mud core, 

the paleoecologists identified 

changes through time in the 

types and abundance of tree 

species and in the occurrence of 

forest fires around Cliff Palace 

Pond. From these diagrams, 

the paleoecologists interpreted 

the history of the forest and 

its forest fires. In addition, by 

finding out what kinds of trees 

grew around the pond, the 

paleoecologists could indirectly 

identify what past climates were 

like. This is because particular 

trees grow only in certain kinds 

of climates.
THE STORY OF CLIFF PALACE POND 7

Paleoecologists and 

archaeologists take a 

sample of the Cliff Palace Pond sediments.

The final step was to fix the 

history of the forest and its 

fires in time and assign dates 

to the events. This was 

important, for this is how 

the pond’s environmental 

history can be linked to the 

human history contained in the 

surrounding archaeological sites.

Assigning dates to the Cliff Palace 

Pond pollen sequence depended on 

comparing it with well-dated major 

forest changes recorded by pollen and 

by archaeological assemblages from 

nearby sites in Virginia and Kentucky. 

These changes themselves were based 

on radiocarbon dating of samples 

carefully selected from other pond 

sediments and archaeological sites. The 

changes in many of the types of pollen 

in the Cliff Palace Pond sediments 

occurred in the same sequence as those 

at other sites in the region.

The objects archaeologists study are 

much larger than tiny pollen grains 

and charcoal particles. To reconstruct 

the human history of the Cliff Palace 

Pond locale, the archaeologists analyzed 

artifacts (things that past people left 

behind) and interpreted their spatial 

(horizontal) and temporal (vertical) 

patterns in the soil layers of the places 

where people once lived. Artifacts and 

their patterns contain clues about how 

past peoples lived, what they ate, what 

they traded for, and what they believed.

Like the paleoecologists, the 

archaeologists visited Keener Point 

Knob to collect information about 

the past. They walked the clifflines of 

the Knob’s perimeter, recording the 

prehistoric and historic human use 

of rockshelters. The 

archaeologists examined 

the narrow ridgetop 

as well for prehistoric 

campsites.

Magnifying a pollen grain reveals 

its distinctive exterior surface, 

which can range from smooth 

to bumpy to even spiny (10μ 

= 10 microns or 10 onethousandths of a millimeter).
8 FORESTS, FOREST FIRES, & THEIR MAKERS 

Archaeologists carefully excavate prehistoric trash deposits in rockshelters to 

recover information about the past.

Scattered on the rockshelter floors 

they found chipped stone tools and 

the debris from their manufacture. 

They also found prehistoric pottery; 

fragments of animal bone and wood 

charcoal; freshwater mussel shells; and 

sandstone rocks used for grinding. 

Metal cans and glass bottles, artifacts 

left behind by more recent visitors, 

were recovered, too.

Some shelters contained evidence 

for more permanent prehistoric 

occupation. Here the archaeologists 

recorded ancient trash deposits and the 

remains of prehistoric hearths. They 

found that looters had badly disturbed 

many of the shelters. The archaeologists 

also discovered a prehistoric stairway (a 

series of footholds cut into the bare cliff 

face).

The archaeologists returned to a few 

of the rockshelter sites to collect more 

detailed information. They carefully 

excavated square or rectangular pits 

(called units) into the undisturbed 

prehistoric trash deposits, screening the 

soil to recover artifacts and taking care 

to keep the artifacts from each soil layer 

separate. They took photographs, drew 

maps, made notes, and collected soil 

samples to process in the laboratory. 

The soil samples could contain tiny 

animal bones as well as tiny charred 

seeds of plant foods, accidentally 

dropped into hearths by prehistoric 

peoples.
THE STORY OF CLIFF PALACE POND 9

Archaeologists discovered this aboriginal petroglyph

(a geometric design pecked or carved into a rock) in 

the large rockshelter below the pond.

Evidence for prehistoric campsites 

on the ridgetop was not as easy to find. 

Trees, shrubs, and leaf litter covered the 

ground. So, the archaeologists dug a 

series of probes (round holes) all across 

the ridgetop on a grid (a checker-board 

pattern). By screening the soil from 

each probe, they found stone tools and 

toolmaking debris. They mapped the 

location of the holes that produced the 

artifacts. In this way, they identified the 

boundaries of a prehistoric campsite 

that covered almost the whole ridge.

Back in the laboratory, the 

archaeologists described the artifacts 

they found: counting, measuring, and 

drawing them. They prepared diagrams 

and maps to show which soil layers 

the artifacts came from and where the 

artifacts had been found at the sites. 

Microscopes helped them identify the 

smallest artifacts, such as tiny fragments 

of burned wood, nuts, and seeds.

They determined when 

prehistoric peoples had lived 

at the sites in two ways. 

Burned wood fragments 

were radiocarbon dated, 

and the archaeologists 

studied characteristics of 

the artifacts themselves: the 

shapes of stone spearpoints 

and arrowheads; the style of 

designs on fragments of broken 

pots; and the manufacturing marks left 

on the sides of historic glass bottles.

The kinds of artifacts found also 

helped the archaeologists figure out 

what cultural activities took place at the 

sites. These could include tool making, 

hunting, wild and domesticated plant 

food processing, gardening, farming, 

historic nitre mining (for making 

gunpowder), and modern looting.

For the final step in their research, 

the archaeologists compared their 

findings from the Keener Point Knob 

sites to others located in the Eastern 

Kentucky mountains and throughout 

the surrounding area. They studied 

regional history books to learn about 

landuse patterns, towns, and industries 

of the historic period. In this way, the 

archaeologists developed a general 

picture of human history at Keener 

Point Knob.
10 FORESTS, FOREST FIRES, & THEIR MAKERS 

FORT ANCIENT

WOODLAND

LATE

ARCHAIC

MIDDLE

ARCHAIC

EARLY

ARCHAIC

PALEOINDIAN

PERMANENTLY

WET POND

HEMLOCK

FIRE

BUTTONBUSH

POOL

CATTAIL MARSH

13,000 Years Ago

10,000 Years Ago

8,000 Years Ago

5,000 Years Ago

3,000 Years Ago

1,000 Years Ago

HISTORIC TODAY Oak, Maple, Black Gum, Pine

Red Spruce,

Northern

White Cedar

Oak, Hemlock,

Sugar Maple

Buttonbush

Spruce

Pine, Oak,

Walnut,

Chestnut

Pine
THE STORY OF CLIFF PALACE POND 11

Cliff Palace Pond may have once 

looked like this drawing of a cattail 

marsh.

The story of Cliff Palace Pond is a 

long one. It starts over 9,500 years ago 

with the formation of the little pond 

and the appearance of people in the 

Keener Point Knob locale.

The pond formed on gently rolling 

sandstone bedrock. A thin layer of 

silty particles, called loess, collected 

in a ridgetop depression in the 

sandstone. These particles had been 

blown southward by winds sweeping 

off the flanks of the retreating glaciers 

and from the sandy floodplains of the 

Ohio River. The silty loess “sealed” the 

bottom of the sandstone depression, 

permitting water to collect in the little 

basin.

Cliff Palace Pond began as a cattail 

marsh within a forest made up of trees 

that grow in the cold climate of Canada 

today. They included cold-loving 

species such as red spruce and northern 

white cedar, as well as hornbeam, birch, 

alder, and aspen. Warmth-requiring 

oaks also grew in these forests. The 

climate was one of sharply distinct 

seasons: very cold winters and warm 

summers. Landslides and forest fires 

set by lightning occurred frequently in 

this type of climate. These disturbances 

would have created patchy, sunlit spots 

for the weedy growth of hornbeam and 

alder in shrubby thickets.

The first people to arrive at Keener 

Point Knob lived in a large rockshelter 

immediately west of the pond. These 

Early Archaic people lived in small 

bands, and moved with the seasons to 

hunt and gather over large territories. 

They hunted animals like white-tailed 

deer, bear, and turkey, using spears 

tipped with distinctively notched 

stone points. As Early Archaic peoples 

became more familiar with their 

surroundings, gathering plant foods, 

such as nuts, seeds, fruits, and roots, 

became increasingly important. Since 

their surroundings provided everything 

they needed, these people seldom used 

fire to manipulate the environment.
12 FORESTS, FOREST FIRES, & THEIR MAKERS 

Above: Buttonbush (Cephalanthus 

occidentalis) plant and pollen. 

Below: Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga 

canadensis) branch and pollen.

Cliff Palace Pond existed as a cattail 

marsh for several thousand years. 

During that time, a little over a foot of 

dark grayish-brown sediment builtup in the shallow depression 

on the crest of Keener Point 

Knob. Sometime between 

7,300 and 4,800 years 

ago, tiny Cliff Palace Pond 

became an open pool in 

which buttonbush grew. 

This is when precipitation 

in the central and southern 

Appalachians increased 

because of a southward shift 

in storm patterns.

The forest on Keener Point Knob 

gradually changed. As the Ice Age 

climate warmed up, the cold-loving 

trees, such as northern white cedar, died 

out. The spruce and alders disappeared. 

In their place, warmth-loving oak, 

hemlock, sugar maple, butternut, 

basswood, and hickories grew. Seasonal 

temperatures evened out: winters 

became warmer and summers became 

cooler. The climate in general grew 

warmer and more like that of today. 

Lightning-set fires occurred much less 

frequently than they had in the past.

Archaeologists call the hunting and 

gathering peoples who lived in this 

rich, temperate forest the Middle 

and Late Archaic peoples. 

Like their ancestors, they lived 

a mobile life, hunting and 

gathering in small bands. They 

moved seasonally within home 

territories, but these territories were 

smaller than those of their ancestors. 

Throughout Eastern Kentucky, these 

Middle and Late Archaic peoples 

set up semi-permanent base camps 

and seasonal hunting and 

fishing camps along rivers 

and creeks, on ridgetops, and in 

rockshelters.

At Keener Point Knob, 

Middle and Late Archaic 

peoples camped on the 

ridgetop surrounding Cliff 

Palace Pond and in several 

rockshelters located in the clifflines 

below it. They likely camped around 

Cliff Palace Pond for short 

periods of time during 

a single year, but did so 

seasonally for thousands 

of years. Middle and 

Late Archaic peoples used the nearby 

rockshelters as base camps, living in 

them for several months a year.

Most activities of daily life took place 

outside their homes, which they used 

mainly for sleeping. These activities 

included cooking meals, making stone 
THE STORY OF CLIFF PALACE POND 13

The atlatl

improved a hunter’s spear-throwing 

accuracy, power, 

distance, 

and speed.

tools, cracking nuts, weaving baskets, 

socializing, and holding rituals and 

ceremonies. 

The men used spears tipped 

with notched and stemmed stone 

spearpoints to hunt white-tailed deer, 

elk, bear, turkey, and an assortment of 

small animals, birds, fish, and turtles. 

Unlike their ancestors, they used an 

atlatl or spearthrower when they 

hunted.

The women collected nuts and wild 

plants in the deep woods, along the 

forest margins, and in glade openings 

in the forest. They used these plants for 

food, medicine, and dyes, and as the 

raw material for baskets and net bags, 

sandals, and mats.

Nuts were an especially important 

source of food for these people. They 

stored well for use in the winter 

months, when other foods were scarce. 

These people preferred hickory nuts, 

but they also ate acorns, chestnuts, 

black walnuts, and butternut.

Lightning-set forest fires, just 

like those of today, occurred 

infrequently along the crest of 

the mountains. When the forest 

did burn, people undoubtedly 

had a hand in it, for they 

knew fire as a powerful tool. 

They used it at their 

camps for heat, 

cooking food, 

and preparing hides. 

They considered fire 

a powerful force, too, 

incorporating it into 

important religious 

ceremonies.

It is likely that these peoples also 

set fire to the forest deliberately, but 

this probably did not happen often. 

Hunters may have set small, controlled 

fires to drive game animals into the 

waiting spears of their companions. 

Groups also may have set fire to the 

forest floor to clear it of unwanted 

vegetation and to enhance the growth 

o f bushes like blueberry and 

huckleberry. Certainly 

Middle and Late Archaic 

peoples did not use fire to 

manipulate the forest as 

much as their gardening 

descendants would do 

later. 

Using hand-sized stones, women

cracked nuts on flat, pitted sandstone 

rocks. 
14 FORESTS, FOREST FIRES, & THEIR MAKERS 

Above: The hemlock 

looper moth (Lambdina fiscellaria) probably 

caused the widespread 

dieoff of all the Knob’s 

hemlock trees (left).

The fossil pollen record at Cliff 

Palace Pond shows that, soon after 

4,800 years ago, all the hemlock trees 

growing on and around Keener Point 

Knob began to die off. By 3,000 years 

ago, these trees had become locally 

extinct. No sharp change in climate 

was the cause. Instead, the hemlock 

looper moth probably was the culprit. 

In its larval stages, this insect eats the 

needle-like hemlock leaves. 

Once the looper eats all 

the needles, the tree 

quickly dies.

This dieback did 

not take place only at Keener 

Point Knob. Throughout their range in 

eastern North America, hemlock trees 

succumbed to the looper at about the 

same time. Thus, the character of the 

forest changed as the once dominant 

hemlocks were lost - the dead and 

dying trees dropped branches, 

toppled over in summer storms, 

and opened up light gaps in the 

leafy forest canopy for other 

kinds of trees to grow and 

replace them.

Keener Point Knob and 

the region as a whole 

was now ripe for a 

catastrophic wildfire. 

For several thousand 

years, lightning-set 

forest fires had occurred 

infrequently. The 

standing or fallen dead 

hemlock trees scattered 

across Keener Point Knob and 

along its slopes represented a large fuel 

load that would burn hot once started.

The size of the charcoal in the 

sediments of Cliff Palace Pond show 

that a major forest fire did indeed sweep 

across Keener Point Knob sometime 

between 4,800 and 3,000 years ago. 

This fire could have burned only a 

small area near the Knob. But given 

the widespread dieback of the hemlock 

trees, it is also possible that 

the fire at Keener Point 

Knob was part of a 

much larger fire.

What might this 

fire have been like? Forest 

fire ecology can provide some 

insights. No doubt it would have 

started in the dead hemlock trees, for 

they were tinder dry. All it would have 

taken was one spark from a summer 

thunderstorm or an Archaic hunting 

party’s loss of control over the fire 

they were using to drive game. 

The hemlocks would have easily 

caught fire, burning quickly and 

intensely, and catching other 

trees on fire. The fire would 

have burned dead hemlock 

branches and fallen 
THE STORY OF CLIFF PALACE POND 15

In the tinder-dry 

hemlock stands, fire 

could have quickly 

spread into the treetops in a number 

of different ways, 

as shown in these 

illustrations.

hemlock trees on the 

ground and climbed 

quickly into the tree 

tops. Rising flames, 

using dead standing 

or leaning hemlock 

trees as ladders, could 

have vaulted up the 

sandstone cliffs to the 

ridgecrests. Depending 

on wind and moisture 

conditions, the fire 

could have quickly 

spread to the oak and hickory trees as 

well.

The fire could have started miles 

away from Keener Point Knob. Dead 

trees could have passed the fire along 

in the tree-tops 

ahead of the fire 

on the ground, 

especially if it 

was windy. Treetop or crown 

fires can move 

several miles 

in a single day 

if conditions 

are right (very 

dry timber 

and strong, 

persistent winds). Or, glowing embers 

could have carried the fire ahead of the 

main body by landing on ridgetops like 

Keener Point Knob.

After the smoke cleared and the 

firestorm had burned itself out, the 

scorched landscape would have looked 

like a patchwork quilt. In areas where 

only light ground fires had passed 

quickly through, the trees themselves 

would have been unburned. In other 

places, partially burned trees would 

have had dead and scorched foliage and 

charred bark. In the completely burned 

areas, the intense heat would have 

reduced the trees to ash and penetrated 

deep into the soil, killing most living 

things. It would have been in these 

areas of scorched earth that the forest 

would have taken the longest time to 

grow back.

And what of 

the animals and 

people? Those 

caught in the 

path of the fire 

without any 

shelter surely 

died. Others, 

smelling the 

smoke, seeing 

the flames, and 

hearing the 

fire approach, 

would have hurried to get out of its 

way. Some people may have headed for 

the rockshelters in the cliffs of Keener 

Point Knob or the nearby firebreaks 

of Station Camp Creek. Others may 

have traveled beyond the limits of their 

home territories in an attempt to escape 

it.
16 FORESTS, FOREST FIRES, & THEIR MAKERS 

The forest 

around Keener 

Point Knob 

may have 

looked like this 

to the prehistoric survivors 

after the Great 

Hemlock Fire: 

leafless stands 

of scorched trees 

and the ground 

covered with 

ash.

Once the fire had passed, what 

was left for these hunting and wild 

plant food gathering people to eat in 

its wake? It depended on how intense 

the fire had been and how large an 

area had been burned. Keener Point 

Knob and its rockshelters may have 

been abandoned for decades or even 

centuries. Home territories may have 

changed for a generation or more to 

avoid areas that had been burned the 

worst. Concerns about angry spirits 

may have kept some areas off-limits to 

people long after the forest had begun 

to grow back. 

In time, the forest recovered, of 

course, but it was a different forest. 

Extensive stands of eastern red cedar 

sprang up on the slopes and firescorched ridgetop at Keener Point 

Knob. The great fire eliminated firesensitive tree species, like beech and 

butternut, from the forest for decades. 

It destroyed many nut-bearing trees, a 

critical source of food. This may have 

meant a threat of wintertime hunger for 

some groups, unless they moved away 

from their home territories for a time.

The scars of the great hemlock fire 

eventually disappeared from the forest. 

Wind and rain deposited ash layers 

in Cliff Palace Pond. At Keener Point 

Knob, blue ash trees replaced the stands 

of eastern red cedar on the slopes. 

Then oaks, chestnut, and for the first 

time, pine, replaced the blue ash.

As the forest recovered, the native 

peoples returned. In time, they again 

gathered plants and nuts in the forest 

at Keener Point Knob and hunted 

the animals that lived within it. Once 

again they made their homes in the 

rockshelters below the Knob and on the 

ridgetop near the pond. But, like the 

forest, these Late Archaic people were 

different, too. They were experimenting 

with a new way of getting a more 

predictable supply of plant food, by 

growing it themselves. This simple act 

changed the face of the forest forever.
THE STORY OF CLIFF PALACE POND 17

Above: Pitch Pine (Pinus 

rigida) branch and pollen.

 Right: Scarlet Oak (Quercus 

coccinea) branch and pollen. 

After the Great Hemlock Fire, 

many changes took place at Keener 

Point Knob and throughout Eastern 

Kentucky. Between 3,000 and 200 

(A.D. 1800) years ago, the climate 

got cooler. Precipitation 

increased and was more 

evenly distributed throughout 

the year.

Cliff Palace Pond became a 

permanently wet pond. The 

change in climate permitted 

a lush growth of buttonbush 

in the pond itself and the 

growth of sphagnum moss 

along its margin.

Despite the increased 

precipitation, local ground fires 

occurred frequently on the ridgetop 

surrounding the pond. These 

fires were not the result of 

a single fire event, like the 

Great Hemlock Fire. They 

were a constant feature of 

the environment. 

These recurring fires transformed 

the forest. Pine trees grew in profusion. 

Other fire-adapted and fire-tolerant 

species, such as oaks, black walnut, and 

chestnut, appeared with the pine and 

eventually dominated the forest around 

the pond. Why? What had changed? 

The lifeways of the prehistoric peoples 

living at Keener Point Knob.

These native peoples, whom 

archaeologists call the Woodland 

peoples, still hunted the same animals 

and collected the same wild plant foods 

as their ancestors. But increasingly, 

they turned to gardening as an 

important occupation.

How did Woodland 

people learn to grow their 

own food? Observant family 

members may have noticed 

that seeds sprouted and 

grew on the trash heaps, 

where they threw out the 

remains of weedy wild plants 

they collected. Under the 

right conditions (soil, light, 

moisture, and freedom from 

competing plants) and over a 

period of time, these volunteers

(plants that come up without 

being planted on purpose) 

produced somewhat larger 

fruits and seeds than their 

wild counterparts. Eventually, these 

genetically selected seeds created new 

domesticated crops.
18 FORESTS, FOREST FIRES, & THEIR MAKERS 

They grew domesticated 

varieties of squash, as well as 

weedy plants like sumpweed, 

sunflower, and goosefoot 

(plants that archaeologists 

call the Eastern Agricultural 

Complex) for their starchy 

or oily seeds.

A gardener is really only a more 

organized, more intensive, plant food 

gatherer. And so Archaic gatherers 

became Woodland gardeners by 

tending volunteer plants that grew 

on their trash heaps. Once they had 

saved the seeds, then planted, weeded, 

and watered the plants, the Woodland 

peoples had turned into gardeners. 

Gardening led them to a more 

sedentary (living in places more 

intensively for longer periods of time) 

way of life. The domesticated seeds, in 

effect, domesticated the people by tying 

them to the land.

Life for these gardeners centered on 

rockshelters, where they lived for longer 

periods of time throughout the year 

than had their Archaic ancestors. Their 

home territories became smaller.

Women made pottery jars for 

cooking, and for storing water as 

well as their garden seeds. At Keener 

Point Knob, Woodland people may 

have carved the stone stairway up the 

sheer sandstone cliff to make it easier 

to get to their ridgetop gardens. A 

Woodland artist may have pecked out 

a spiral petroglyph design on a flat 

rock. Perhaps the artwork was tied to 

rituals associated with these new ways 

of getting food.

They probably located their gardens 

close to their rockshelter homes on 

sunlit hillslopes and on ridgetops like 

Keener Point Knob. In one of the 

several garden spots they kept in the 

forest, the women would have used 

digging sticks to prepare the soil. Then 

they would have dropped the seeds 

into a hole and covered them up with 

dirt. During the growing season, the 

women would have tended the plants 

periodically. At harvest time, they 

would have pulled squash from the 

vines and knocked ripe seeds off the 

weedy native plants into cane baskets. 
THE STORY OF CLIFF PALACE POND 19

The men used stone 

axes to clear space in 

the forest for their 

family’s gardens.

The success of the Woodland 

gardeners depended on their ability to 

open up spots in the forest for their 

gardens. Fire was the tool they used.

Paleoecologists and archaeologists 

think that the increase in the frequency 

of forest fires after around 3,000 years 

ago at Keener Point Knob was the 

result of people deliberately burning 

the forest for their garden patches. 

Woodland gardeners did not set fires 

only to remove the forest underbrush 

to enhance animal habitat. Archaic 

peoples had been doing that for 

thousands of years. No, Woodland 

people set fire to the forest more 

frequently and more deliberately than 

in the past because they now had 

gardens.

Information collected from 

archaeological sites at Keener Point 

Knob and from other Eastern Kentucky 

sites, like Cold Oak Shelter in Lee 

County and Cloudsplitter Rockshelter 

in Menifee County, supports this 

explanation. In fact, at sites all across 

Eastern Kentucky, an increase in fire 

and fire-tolerant tree species occurs at 

the same time native peoples turned to 

gardening as a way of life.

Native peoples most intensively 

occupied Eastern Kentucky 

rockshelters beginning 

around 3,000 years ago. 

This is the same time that 

they began to grow their 

own food, as reflected by the 

charred seeds of domesticated 

plants found 

in rockshelter 

trash deposits.

The fossil pollen record from 

Cliff Palace Pond also supports this 

interpretation. Pollen of plants native 

peoples first grew as they turned to 

gardening begins to occur consistently 

in pond sediments at the time when the 

transition from plant food gatherer to 

plant food gardener took place.

The fires these gardeners set to clear 

the land were not the intense fires of 

a major forest fire. Like those of their 

Archaic ancestors, the fires Woodland 

peoples deliberately set to burn off the 

surface materials and kill smaller trees 

and saplings were relatively cool and 

controlled. But the Woodland peoples 

took their burning one step further 

than their Archaic predecessors. Their 

main purpose for 

using fire was 

to create light 

gaps in the 

forest canopy 

for their 

gardens.

To kill the larger standing 

trees, these prehistoric 

gardeners had two options. 

The women could set fire to 

wood piled around the base 

of the larger standing trees, or 

the men could use their stone 

axes to chop out a section of 

bark all around the tree (called 

girdling). Eventually, the dead 

tree snag would fall over, to be 

removed later by burning. 
20 FORESTS, FOREST FIRES, & THEIR MAKERS 

This chart shows how disturbed habitat plants, the ones Woodland peoples 

grew and domesticated, became the main ones used at Cold Oak Shelter as 

they turned to a gardening way of life.

They located their gardens on 

hillslopes and on ridgetops like Keener 

Point Knob for several reasons. Fires 

burned more intensely in these places 

than on the wet floodplains, thus 

reducing the forest leaf litter and weedy 

plants to a nutrient-rich ash. This 

resulted in a soil that was loose and free 

of weeds; a soil that could be worked 

easily with a digging stick. Early frosts 

and shading also were not a problem 

for hillside gardens, as they would have 

been for gardens planted along creeks. 

South-facing hillslopes were warmer 

than the valley bottoms and received 

more sunlight for longer periods of 

time each day. Erosion of slopes was 

not a problem, because the forest soil 

was not intensively disturbed in these 

garden plots.

Fire in the hands of native peoples 

enhanced habitat diversity. It turned 

the forest into a fine-grained patchwork 

of vegetation. Garden patches were 

similar in size to forest openings created 

by windstorms that blew down one to 

several large old trees. Native people’s 

clearing and abandonment of gardens 

also mimicked the natural pattern of 

forest regrowth in light gaps caused 

by tree falls. Burning patches of the 

understory opened up the forest and 

increased the rate at which forest 

nutrients were returned to the soil. 

Grasses, shrubs, and non-woody plants 

tended to grow more densely and 

vigorously in these places. This created 

ideal habitats for forest-edge wildlife, 

promoting an increase in game animals.

2,000

Years

Ago

3,000

Years

Ago 0% Forest Disturbed 100%
THE STORY OF CLIFF PALACE POND 21

Above: Basswood (Tilia 

americana) branch and pollen.

Right: Sugar Maple (Acer 

saccharum) branch and pollen.

What did the forest look like after 

these prehistoric gardeners had been 

at work for some time? A rich and 

diverse forest community grew in 

the sheltered ravines 

and lower slopes 

below the rockshelters. 

It included basswood, 

sugar maple, butternut, 

hickory, beech, and 

cucumber magnolia. 

The floodplain forest 

along Station Camp 

Creek, just east of Keener Point 

Knob, included canebrakes and 

the water-loving willow and 

sycamore. These locales, often in the 

noon-day shade, may have remained 

relatively protected from the spread of 

human-set fires. 

Exposed ridgetops, upper slopes, 

and local hillslope patches near cliff 

overhangs experienced the most 

impact from human-set fires. This 

is because these were the preferred 

garden locations. A relatively open 

stand of yellow pine grew on the dry 

ridgetop, as did flowering 

dogwood, sassafras, and 

sourwood. Thickets 

of heaths (blueberry, 

huckleberry, laurel, 

and rhododendron), wild grasses, 

and wild flowers grew in the open 

understory of the ridgetop pine stands. 

Oaks, chestnut, hickories, black walnut, 

black gum, and red 

maple grew in light 

gaps in the forests 

on the upper 

slopes near the 

rockshelters. 

Even-aged stands of tulip 

poplar, white pine, and sweet 

gum grew in canopy gaps 

near the rockshelters where 

native peoples had planted 

their gardens in the past. Small 

open garden patches also occurred 

in these locales. Bracken fern and 

weedy species that invade openings in 

the forest, such as ragweed, grew in and 

around the gardens. 

 * * * * * 

Around 1,000 years ago, seeds of 

corn and beans were brought to Eastern 

Kentucky from outside the region. 

The Woodland peoples gave up their 

small garden plots and most of their 

indigenous garden plants. Instead, they 

turned to farming extensive fields of 

corn. These fields required rich soils 

on moist, flat river terraces. The steep 

hillsides where once they grew their 

gardens would not do.
22 FORESTS, FOREST FIRES, & THEIR MAKERS 

Above: Corn was an important crop for Fort Ancient 

farmers.

Left: Fort Ancient hunters used bows and arrows instead of 

spears and atlatls to hunt the forest animals.

A farmer is really only a gardener 

who plants more intensively and 

extensively. So the change from gatherer 

to farmer is really just a progression 

of ever increasing time investment in 

the tending, nurturing, weeding, 

and harvesting of plants. This 

change carries a price: an 

ever increasing dependence 

on plants for food and a 

stronger bond with the 

land.

The Woodland peoples’ 

descendants, called Fort 

Ancient by archaeologists, grew 

corn, beans, squash, and tobacco 

in large fields on the floodplains. 

These prehistoric farmers cleared and 

maintained their fields with fire in the 

same way their Woodland ancestors had 

cleared and maintained their gardens. 

But they did so on a much broader and 

more intensive scale. They, 

too, burned the forest to 

enhance animal habitat 

for the deer, bear, 

elk, and 

turkey 

they 

hunted 

with bows 

and arrows. 

Although the 

Fort Ancient 

peoples relied on their 

crops, they also collected 

and ate wild plants.

Like their ancestors, they lived near 

their crops. But for the Fort Ancient 

peoples, this meant building large 

villages some distance away 

from the Knob on the 

floodplains of larger 

streams and creeks. 

Keener Point Knob 

was no longer the 

focus of base camps 

and year-round 

rockshelter use. Now, 

only small groups 

of adults and older 

children who left 

the villages in winter 

on hunting trips used the 

rockshelters as occasional camps.

With the arrival of Europeans along 

the Atlantic coastline 450 years ago, 

native ways of life in North America, 

and eventually in Eastern Kentucky, 

changed. Smallpox and other European 

diseases preceded by decades the 

Europeans’ physical entry into the 

region. Because native peoples had no 

natural immunity to these diseases, 

groups such as the Shawnee, Cherokee, 

and Tutelo, were decimated by them. 

The arrival of European explorers 

and traders in the Ohio Valley and 

Eastern Kentucky about 250 years 

ago completed the replacement of 

the region’s native peoples or their 

absorption into European colonial 

populations. 
THE STORY OF CLIFF PALACE POND 23

Left: American Chestnut (Castanea denta) 

branch and pollen. 

Right: Dock (Rumex acetosella)

plant and pollen.

The last complete chapter in the 

story of Cliff Palace Pond is the shortest 

(A.D. 1800 to A.D. 1940, only 140 

years long). It was a time of abrupt, 

widespread, and drastic changes in 

the forest and the people who lived 

within it. And unlike the preceding 

chapters in the Cliff Palace Pond story, 

paleoecologists and archaeologists 

can turn to the written history of the 

forest and the people to supplement 

information provided by fossil pollen, 

charcoal particles, and artifacts.

Cliff Palace Pond itself changed little 

during this period. It remained a small, 

permanent pond. The pond and the 

continued human use of fire to clear 

the forest, though on a much more 

extensive scale, represent the few links 

to the past during this period.

Fire-tolerant species still dominated 

the forest on Keener Point Knob. Oaks 

remained, as did red maple, black gum, 

and Virginia pine. But the tall chestnut 

trees had disappeared. The Cliff Palace 

Pond sediments record the historically 

documented chestnut blight. It is 

represented by a major decrease in 

chestnut pollen. A fungus on chestnut 

nursery stock imported from Europe 

brought the blight to New York in 

1904. It spread down the Appalachian 

Mountains, reaching Eastern Kentucky 

by 1930. It quickly killed all mature 

chestnut trees.

The amount of ragweed, a weedy 

plant that usually grows in plowed 

fields, increased sharply in this 

period. Dock, a perennial 

herb introduced from 

Europe that also 

invades cultivated 

land, also appeared.
24 FORESTS, FOREST FIRES, & THEIR MAKERS 

Logging and clearing land for farms at the turn of the 19th century

drastically altered Eastern Kentucky’s forests.

Conversion of large sections of 

forest land to farming, industry, and 

human settlement took place for the 

first time. The result was widespread 

deforestation. Eastern Kentucky and 

its people had never before witnessed 

environmental change on such a 

vast scale. Fire was only one of many 

techniques used.

Although the ethnic makeup 

of the forest’s people had changed 

since prehistoric times, the human 

relationship to the forest changed 

little at first. In the earliest years 

of white settlement, the lives EuroAmerican subsistence farmers led were 

comparable to those of the Indians. 

Some pioneers lived in rockshelters. 

Most lived in log cabins scattered along 

stream valleys in places similar to those 

where Fort Ancient farmers once had 

lived.

The Euro-Americans made their 

living by farming, by hunting, and 

by gathering wild plant foods. They 

grew the Indian crops of corn, beans, 

gourds, and tobacco. But they also 

grew Old World crops like oats, wheat, 

and hemp, and they tended fruit trees 

in orchards. Unlike the Fort Ancient 

farmers, they kept domesticated 

livestock, such as cattle, sheep, mules, 

chickens, horses, and hogs. But they 

also hunted deer, raccoon, opossum, 

squirrel, and rabbit like the native 

peoples.

Guns replaced the bow and arrow 

and iron tools replaced those of stone. 

However, Euro-Americans cleared the 

land for farming and for settlement in 

essentially the same way the Indians 

had done it - with fire. Though they 

cut down trees with iron axes, they still 

piled up loose brush and logs by hand, 

and reduced the piles to ash by the fires 

they set. Unlike the native peoples, they 

removed stumps and worked the earth 

for planting with a team of mules or 

oxen.

In the spring, like the Indians, 

these Kentuckians of mainly Scottish 

and Irish descent burned the woods 

near their homes to clear the shrubby 

undergrowth. Folk wisdom said this 

would improve grass growth for their 

livestock, which they allowed to range 
THE STORY OF CLIFF PALACE POND 25

Left: During the logging 

boom, the area’s forests 

were cleared for lumber.

throughout the wooded slopes. People 

of Indian heritage knew that fire was a 

purification tool, used to rid the forest 

of anything unwanted. In the fall, the 

mountain people also set fires in the 

harvested fields and in the woods to 

drive out game animals during hunting.

Before the Civil War, a marked 

change in the regional human-forest 

relationship began with the appearance 

of the iron industry. Charcoal used to 

smelt iron was made from hardwood 

trees in the forests surrounding the 

furnaces. Thousands of acres of trees 

were needed to produce enough 

charcoal to keep these furnaces 

running.

After the Civil War, huge tracts 

of forest in Eastern Kentucky were 

sold and cut as a result of the logging 

boom (from 1870-1910). A regional 

population explosion followed the 

railroad and its attendant industries.

Unlike many places in Eastern 

Kentucky, few people visited the 

Keener Point Knob vicinity. People of 

European descent did not settle, farm, 

or burn the Knob. This was due to 

its remoteness and to the fact that the 

surrounding landscape lacked large 

tracts of bottomland.

When people did return, it was 

around 1900. They came to take its 

natural resources. Someone mined a 

little nitre (an ingredient used to make 

gunpowder) at one rockshelter. For 

about 20 years, starting around 1900, 

the Turkeyfoot Lumber Company 

selectively harvested timber across 

northern Jackson County, including 

Keener Point Knob. The company 

brought the logs by standard gauge 

railroad to a sawmill in Lee County. 

Traces of this logging road are still 

visible in the woods east of the pond.

Above: Roadbeds 

like this one were cut 

through the area to 

transport logs by train.
26 FORESTS, FOREST FIRES, & THEIR MAKERS 

Prehistoric human-set fires were instrumental in creating the “natural” beauty 

of Eastern Kentucky’s forests.

Today at Cliff Palace Pond, we do 

not need fossil pollen to tell us what 

the environment is like. We can see it 

with our own eyes. And we do not need 

artifacts of the past to tell us about the 

people, for now we are part of the story.

Cliff Palace Pond, as it has been for 

the last 7,300 years, is a small pond 

surrounded by forest. Tree pollen and 

charcoal ash windborn from forest fires, 

are still falling onto the pond’s surface, 

then drifting and settling into its mucky 

sediments. 

Today’s young hardwood forest is 

dominated by red maple, black gum, 

oaks, and hickories. The understory 

supports a variety of trees and shrubs. 

They include beech, flowering 

dogwood, sassafras, big leaf magnolia, 

white pine, mountain laurel, and tulip 

poplar. On the sandstone ridge leading 

southward away from the pond, the 

forest consists mainly of northern red 

oak, with mature trees of pitch pine, 

post oak, chestnut oak, white oak, and 

hickory. Bracken fern grows across 

this upland in the shallow, acidic soils 

underlain by sandstone. White oak, 

hickory, and northern red oak grow on 

the lower slopes in loamy soils derived 

from shales.

Today, Keener Point Knob is 

part of the Daniel Boone National 

Forest’s London Ranger District. It 

has been part of a national forest since 

1937, when the U.S. Department of 

Agriculture purchased the land from 

the Turkeyfoot Lumber Company. No 

one has lived at Keener Point Knob 

since Fort Ancient hunters camped in 

the rockshelters. No one has logged any 

trees since the mid-1920s. No one has 

deliberately set fires since the 1940s. 

Cliff Palace Pond has become a quiet 

place. The wild sounds of the forest are 

the only ones you hear, and the slices of 

sky visible through breaks in the forest 

canopy reveal millions of bright stars on 

a crisp autumn night.

The silence is broken occasionally. 

Recreation seekers have watched the sun 

set across the forested mountain ridges. 

People craving artifacts have destroyed 

our cultural heritage by looting all the 

rockshelters. Scientists have visited, 

interested in discovering the secrets of 

the past that lie preserved within the 

pond and in the rockshelters in the 
THE STORY OF CLIFF PALACE POND 27

steep sandstone clifflines below it.

Archaeologists first visited Keener 

Point Knob in the early 1980s. In 

1996, the same year paleoecologists 

came to sample the pond sediments, 

archaeologists returned to Keener 

Point Knob. Though they documented 

additional prehistoric use of the Knob 

vicinity, they found no evidence of 

recent human occupation.

They did find, however, evidence 

of modern human activity. Some of it 

was hard to see: graffiti (“T F 59”) on 

a rock in a rockshelter and the scatter of 

trash from hikers or partygoers. Some of 

it was hard to miss. Backdirt piles and 

holes left by looters are present in every 

rockshelter that surrounds the Knob. 

These looters have destroyed forever the 

fragile record of the past. Their activities 

have made the story of the people who 

lived at Keener Point Knob much more 

difficult to piece together.

Until recently, the U.S. Forest 

Service has followed a policy set in the 

1940s of actively preventing forest fires. 

The lichen mats growing on exposed 

sandstone flats near Cliff Palace Pond 

reflect this. So does the composition 

of the forest itself. Eastern red cedar, 

saplings of tulip poplar, white pine, and 

black gum are replacing fire-tolerant 

tree species. Fire-intolerant woody 

species that are prolific sprouters, such 

as red maple, sassafras, basswood, and 

beech, are increasing.

The unexpected increase of these 

trees in the Daniel Boone National 

Forest has led the U.S. Forest Service 

to rethink the role fire plays in forest 

maintenance. This was why the 

paleoecologists came to study the 

history of fire at Cliff Palace Pond.

Fires have not disappeared from the 

forest completely, but they are different 

from the ones set regularly until 70 

years ago. Lightning-set fires account 

for only one out of every 100 fires 

on the forest. Fires set by people are 

caused by arson or occur accidentally, 

set by smokers or people burning 

trash. Private, state, and federal land 

management agencies purposefully set 

fires under controlled conditions (called 

prescribed burns).

It is clear from the fossil pollen and 

charcoal particles preserved in the Cliff 

Palace Pond sediments that human-set 

fires were a very important part of the 

forest ecosystem. They were so much 

a part, in fact, that by suppressing fire, 

tree species in the forest have come to 

reflect its absence.

A visitor to today’s forest and the 

tiny pond within it might think of the 

Eastern Kentucky landscape as eternal, 

untouched by human hands. Indeed, 

the forest that surrounds Cliff Palace 

Pond has been shaped by natural forces. 

Today, hikers enjoy visitng Keener 

Point Knob for its panoramic views.
But the Cliff Palace Pond story has 

shown us that people have been and 

continue to be an integral part of the 

forest. It has been shaped by the hands 

of fire-wielding peoples, who lit fires 

in the forest for thousands of years and 

then recently, purposefully, stopped 

lighting them. It is an artifact as surely 

as the stone tools prehistoric peoples 

made and the houses and villages they 

built.

Now that Cliff Palace Pond has 

revealed its pollen and charcoal history, 

and the rockshelters have revealed 

their cultural history, we know how 

the forest and its inhabitants have been 

inextricably intertwined throughout 

time. We have the obligation to act on 

that knowledge, to become stewards of 

the past.

To put what we have learned into 

action, we must reintroduce frequent 

and light intensity fire on Keener Point 

Knob’s upper slopes and ridgetop. At 

the same time, we must continue to 

suppress arson fires on the ecologically 

sensitive lower slopes. We must apply 

what we have learned about past 

peoples’ use of fire to use it ourselves 

as a tool for managing the forest. Cliff 

Palace Pond has taught us that the 

limited, focused, and controlled use 

of fire actually enhances biological 

diversity and can help keep the forest 

ecosystem in natural balance. 

We must protect the priceless sites 

that contain the information of the 

past: pond and petroglyph, rockshelter 

and ridge site. We must monitor the 

archaeological sites that still contain 

undisturbed information about the past 

and prosecute those who would destroy 

it. And above all, we must share with 

everyone the story of this rare and very 

special place.

These images illustrate the change in Forest Service fire policy: the 19th-century 

firefighters on the left are putting out a wildfire. Today’s firefighters still fight 

wildfires, but they also use prescribed burning to enhance biological diversity and 

prevent fuel buildup, as shown in the image on the right.

28 FORESTS, FOREST FIRES, & THEIR MAKERS: THE STORY OF CLIFF PALACE POND
KENTUCKY ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY

The Kentucky Archaeological Survey is jointly administered by the Kentucky 

Heritage Council (State Historic Preservation Office) and the University of Kentucky 

Department of Anthropology. Its mission is to provide a service to other state agencies, 

to work with private landowners to protect archaeological sites, and to educate the 

public about Kentucky’s rich archaeological heritage. For more information write/call: 

Kentucky Archaeological Survey, 1020-A Export Street, Lexington, Kentucky, 40506-

9854, 606/257-5173.

KENTUCKY HERITAGE COUNCIL

The mandate of the Kentucky Heritage Council is to identify, preserve, and protect 

the cultural resources of Kentucky. The Council also maintains continually-updated 

inventories of historic structures and archaeological sites, and nominates properties 

to the National Register of Historic Places. By working with other state and federal 

agencies, local communities, and interested citizens, the Council seeks to build a 

greater awareness of Kentucky’s past and to encourage the long-term preservation of 

Kentucky’s significant cultural resources. Through its various programs (e.g., Main 

Street, Grants, Publications, Rural Preservation, Civil War Initiative, Conferences), the 

Council strives to show how historic resources contribute to the heritage, economy, 

and quality of life of all Kentuckians. For more information write/call: Kentucky 

Heritage Council, 300 Washington Street, Frankfort, Kentucky 40601, 502/564-6661. 

UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

The University of Kentucky Department of Anthropology has a mission to educate 

students and promote scholarly research in the field of archaeology. The Department 

also is charged by state law with enforcing and administering the State Antiquities Act, 

which prohibits the destruction of archaeological sites on state and municipal lands. 

It maintains comprehensive inventory files and records on archaeological sites in the 

Commonwealth through the Office of State Archaeology, and supports the major 

state curation repository for archeological collections at the William S. Webb Museum 

of Anthropology. For more information write/call: Department of Anthropology, 

University of Kentucky, 211 Lafferty Hall, Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0024, 606/

257-2710.

HERITAGE PROGRAM DANIEL BOONE NATIONAL FOREST

The 692,000 acres of land in Eastern Kentucky managed by the Daniel Boone 

National Forest have supported human populations throughout prehistoric, historic, 

and modern times. Since the historic record of these people and their activities is not 

quite 250 years old, the task of recording and interpreting the remaining 12,250 years 

of human activity on the forest falls to the archaeologist. Knowledge of the past is 

a part of everyone’s basic heritage. The goals of the Daniel Boone National Forest’s 

Heritage Program are to interpret the record left by those who preceded us and to pass 

on this legacy so that future generations can continue to experience their heritage. 

For more information about the history and prehistory of the Daniel Boone National 

Forest, contact Cecil Ison at Daniel Boone National Forest, 1700 Bypass Road, 

Winchester, Kentucky, 40391, 606/745-3100.
Slack Farm and the 

Caborn-Welborn People 

By David Pollack, Cheryl Ann Munson, and A. Gwynn Henderson (1996). This booklet summarizes what 

has been learned about this Mississippian society based 

on the research that followed the looting at the Slack 

Farm Site. The authors describe the lifeways of these 

farming people who lived in western Kentucky from 

A.D. 1,400-1,700. $5.00.

Mute Stones Speak: Archaic Lifeways 

of the Escarpment Region in Jackson 

County, Kentucky

By William E. Sharp and A. Gwynn Henderson 

(1997). This booklet reviews the prehistory of the 

Escarpment Region of Eastern Kentucky, focusing on 

the lifeways of Archaic hunter-gatherers who lived in 

Jackson County in 6,000 B.C. and how they made 

stone tools. $3.00.

Prehistoric Hunters and Gatherers: 

Kentucky’s First Pioneers 

Leon Lane, Eric J. Schlarb, and A. Gwynn Henderson (1998). This booklet describes how the very first 

people colonized and settled Kentucky at the end of 

the Ice Age, between 11,500 and 8,000 years ago. 

$3.00.

Other Booklets in this Series

To purchase a booklet, call or write the Kentucky Archaeological Survey. Discounts are available to teachers 

on orders of 20 or more.