The Link Farm (Duck River) Cache: A Tennessee Treasure	by David H. Dye,
Central States Archaeological Societies 2018 October Journal	University of Memphis

This excerpt from "The Link Farm (Duck River) Cache: A Tennessee Treasure" is page 1 of 4. Read the complete 4 page column in the Central States Archaeological Societies 2018 October Journal which can be purchased on-line after March 2019

Figure 1. The Link Farm Site. Photograph by David H.Dye

 

The Link Farm site (40HS6), with its multiple mounds and large plaza (Figs 1,4), began to attract the attention of archaeologists in the late nineteenth century. Located in western Humphreys County, Tennessee, the site occupies an approximately 225-acre upland at the Buffalo River’s confluence with the Duck River. Multiple bedded outcrops of Fort Payne chert are abundant in the area, forming thin, lateral beds. Quarry pits may be found along the hillsides surrounding the Link Farm site, suggesting the site occupied an important role in extracting chert slabs, which local Mississippian flint knappers crafted into sword-form bifaces and other types of symbolic weaponry. While the majority of the site was purchased by the state of Tennessee in 1974, the remaining portion came under state control in 2009.

Two occupation areas may be identified within the Link Farm site boundaries, an eastern mound complex, and a western mound and plaza complex. The eastern mound complex is three quarters of a mile southeast of the western mound and plaza group with the two complexes being connected by two long, sloping ridges. One ridge runs along the Duck River as a 240-foot bluff, which overlooks the narrow floodplain. The highest part of the upland limestone hills, where the Duck River cache was found, is known as Link Hill. The western complex occupies a flat terrace some 100 feet above the Duck River. The nine-acre plaza is bounded on the north and northwest by two platform mounds and on the south, southwest, and west by three small conical mounds. A loaf-shaped mound demarcates the east side of the plaza. Four cemetery mounds surround the mound and plaza group on the plateau’s perimeter.

A now-destroyed rock art panel, associated with the Link Farm polity, contained a suite of petroglyphs carved onto Paint Rock Bluff, a prominent landmark, which rises some 80 feet above the Duck River 3.5 miles downstream from the Link Farm site. About 50 feet above the river are found figures of the half moon and seven stars cut in the face of the rock. Early European settlers who found the rock art painted them red, hence the name.

In December 1894, Cave Nolan, a field hand employed by the Banks Link family, unintentionally unearthed forty-six extraordinary flint bifaces as he grubbed out a small garden on a flat area of the Link Hill ridge system (Figs. 2,6). The biface forms include axes, batons, bi-pointed sword-forms, disks, hooks, maces, and turtle effigies – the largest biface measures 28 inches in length. On March 23 of the following year, George Pewett unearthed a pair of female and male sandstone statues beneath the blade cache. The biface and statue cache had been placed on the highest point of Link Hill in the midst of the eastern complex among numerous cemetery and residence mounds.

The cache contents may have been removed from their original context, perhaps a mortuary shrine or temple in the western mound and plaza complex. Caches such as the Link Farm cache conform to archaeological expectations of a mortuary temple’s contents. On the other hand, the cache may have been resident in the midst of a ritual precinct.

Read the complete 4 page column in the Central States Archaeological Societies 2018 October Journal which can be purchased on-line after March 2019

Figure 2. The original photograph of the Duck River Cache, which appeared as Plate XIV A in the second edition of The Antiquities of Tennessee and the Adjacent States by Gates P. Thruston published in 1897.

Read the complete 4 page column in the Central States Archaeological Societies 2018 October Journal which can be purchased on-line after March 2019