The Jonathan Creek report was published shortly after the first application of radiocarbon dating and widespread acceptance that the ancient history of the Americas extended back at least 10,000 years, yet Webb’s interpretive framework remained entrenched within a sense of foreshortened time depth that characterized American archeology prior to World War II. Webb sought to interpret architecture at the site (Figure 6) in terms of chronology and migration. He also used analogy with the chronicles of the 16th-century de Soto entrada,(31) which described similar kinds of palisaded villages, and ethnohistoric accounts of the Chickasaw, who claimed lands in western Kentucky where Jonathan Creek is located, and the Natchez, who had historic connections with the Chickasaw. (32) He noted the absence of European trade goods from Jonathan Creek and that the ceramics differed from those recovered from known 16th- and 17th-century sites, like Chickasaw Old Fields in Mississippi,(33) leading him to rightly conclude that the site predated European contact.(34) Webb, however, was reluctant to reconstruct ancient lifeways, possibly because of his lack of formal training in anthropology, which seems to have hampered him more than other archeologists of the time, many of whom also did not have strong anthropological backgrounds.(35)

Webb did not describe the site as belonging to the Mississippian Tradition, even though this cultural classification had been in use for nearly half a century.(36) Instead, he drew analogies with other sites in the Southeast on the basis of similar ceramics, house styles, and stockades. The material culture descriptions provided in the report are relatively simple, conforming to an approach Webb had used since he first began archeological research in Kentucky in the 1920s, and focused on a limited inventory of the materials recovered, stressed functional interpretations, and avoided accepted typologies. (37) This trait list approach to archeological classification, common practice before World War II, later came under heavy criticism. (38)

The story related by Webb in a section of his report appropriately and cautiously entitled, “Speculations,” is that the Jonathan Creek site had been occupied by two distinct sets of people. According to Webb, the first residents of the community lived in wall-trench structures and pit houses and built the stockades with the large, rectangular bastions. (Figure 4) Webb argued that the innermost of these stockades was constructed first and the community gradually expanded in size. (39) He further suggested that the people responsible for the first occupation were Chickasaw. He hints that the site was then abandoned for a period of time.

Webb posited that the second occupation of the site started out small, by people who built the square single-post structures and the stockades with the small bastions. He suggested that the first wall erected was the innermost small-bastioned stockade. Subsequent stockades reflected slight but insignificant increases in community size. Webb associated this second occupation of the site with the Natchez.

Page 4 of 6