page_title: Lower Shawneetown
section_title: Fort Ancient settlement
hierarchical_section_title: Lower Shawneetown / Fort Ancient settlement
caption_attribution_description: English: en:Shell gorget excavated from a en:Fort Ancient site in Ohio, United States. On display at the Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center in Portsmouth, Ohio.
context_page_description: Lower Shawneetown, also known as the Bentley Site, Shannoah and Sonnontio, is a Late Fort Ancient culture Madisonville horizon archaeological site overlain by an 18th-century Shawnee village; it is located within the Lower Shawneetown Archeological District, near South Portsmouth in Greenup County, Kentucky and Lewis County, Kentucky. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 28, 1983.
  Between about 1734 and 1758 Lower Shawneetown became a center for commerce and diplomacy, "a sort of republic populated by a diverse array of migratory peoples, from the Iroquois to the Delawares, and supplied by British traders, Lower Shawneetown had become a formidable threat to French ambitions. With a 'fairly large number of bad characters from various nations,' Lower Shawneetown posed a significant challenge to France and Great Britain alike. The community was less a village and more of a 'district extending along the wide Scioto River and narrower Ohio River floodplains and terraces.' It was a sprawling series of wickiups and longhouses ... French and British traders regarded Lower Shawneetown as one of two capitals of the Shawnee tribe."
context_section_description: The site is a 1.2 hectare village on the second flood terrace of the Ohio River, located across from the mouth of the Scioto River. It was excavated in the 1930s and was discovered to have had similar structures and building techniques as those found at another nearby Fort Ancient site, the Hardin Village Site located 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) up the Ohio. Also found during the excavations were distinctive Madisonville horizon pottery, including cordmarked, plain and grooved-paddle jars, as well as a variety of chert points, scrapers and ceremonial pipes. The site was inhabited continuously from 1400 to about 1650 CE and probably had a population of 250 to 500 people living in long, rectangular houses covered with bark and shared by multiple families, as indicated by the several central hearths and interior partitions.
  Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the community engaged in trade with other villages, as evidenced by the presence in graves of ornamental shell gorgets made from the shells of marine mollusks harvested off the coasts of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. Fort Ancient residents probably obtained these shells by trading salt extracted from boiled brine. Salt was still being produced as late as 1755 when the captive Mary Draper Ingles was employed in boiling brine before she escaped from Lower Shawneetown in October of that year.
  Many 18th century European trade goods were also found at the site, including gun spalls and gunflints, gun parts (sideplate, mainspring, ram pipes, and breech plugs), wire-wound and drawn glass beads, tinkling cones, a button, pendants, an earring, cutlery, kettle ears, a key, nails, chisels, hooks, a buckle, a Jew's harp, and pieces of a pair of iron scissors.
  The Fort Ancient residents of southern Ohio were very likely wiped out in the late seventeenth century by infectious diseases brought by Europeans, particularly measles, smallpox, and influenza. Graves from this period often contain multiple burials—from four to over a hundred individuals—reflecting a sudden increase in mortality typical of epidemics. Depopulation may have been hastened by Iroquois raids during the Beaver Wars (1629-1701). The region was largely uninhabited when Lower Shawneetown was founded in the early 18th century.
caption: Mississippian shell gorget from the Hardin Village Fort Ancient site, now at the Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center in Portsmouth, Ohio.
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