page_title: Tomotley
section_title: Archaeology
hierarchical_section_title: Tomotley / Archaeology
caption_attribution_description: The site of the Cherokee town of Tomotley, now under Tellico Lake in Monroe County, Tennessee, located in the southeastern United States. Tomotley was located just beyond the strip of land spanning the middle of the picture. The view is looking northeast from the Toqua Boat Ramp.
context_page_description: Tomotley is a prehistoric and historic Native American site in Monroe County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. Occupied as early as the Archaic period, the Tomotley site had the most substantial periods of habitation during the Mississippian period, likely when the earthwork mounds were built and later during the mid to late eighteenth century as a refugee village of Cherokee from the Lower, Middle and Valley towns.
  The Tomotley site is now submerged by Tellico Lake, an impoundment of the Little Tennessee River managed by the Tennessee Valley Authority. The site is visible from Toqua Beach and the Toqua Boat Ramp, both of which are managed by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.
context_section_description: The first major archaeological investigation at the Tomotley site was conducted by J.W. Emmert of the Smithsonian Institution in the 1880s. Emmert located two mounds at the site, one of which was 8 feet (2.4 m) high and had a diameter of 58 feet (18 m). Both contained human burials.
  In anticipation of the inundation of the lower Little Tennessee Valley by the creation of Tellico Lake, the University of Tennessee Department of Anthropology (under contract with the National Park Service) surveyed the area in 1967. Test excavations were conducted at the Tomotley site that same year in an attempt to locate the historical village. As the Tellico Dam project stalled, more extensive excavations were conducted in 1973, 1974, and 1976. The excavations located 19 Cherokee and pre-Cherokee structures, including Tomotley's councilhouse, 18 human burials, and several thousand ceramic, stone, and bone artifacts.
  While the site yielded evidence of Archaic and Woodland period occupation, excavation revealed that Tomotley's most substantial periods of habitation occurred during the Mississippian period (1000-1500 A.D.), when the mounds were built; and during the Overhill Cherokee period (18th century). Excavations also uncovered a number of Euro-American artifacts, some of which may have originated with the Fort Loudoun garrison.
caption: The now-submerged former site of Tomotley
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