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Dust Cave, Alabama

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Encyclopedia of Geoarchaeology

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

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Dust Cave (1Lu492) is a habitation site located within a karstic vestibule in the middle Tennessee River Valley of northern Alabama (Figure 1). The cave entrance contains over 4 vertical meters of sediment generated through various processes (Figure 2), with human occupation being the primary source (Sherwood et al., 2004). This segment of the Tennessee River is generally considered a migration route and staging area for the colonization of eastern North America based primarily on the high concentration of fluted points found in the area (Anderson, 1996; Anderson and Sassaman, 1996; Anderson and Gillam, 2000; Anderson et al., 2010). Periodically occupied over 7,000 years, the cave contains well-preserved bone and botanical materials and exhibits microstratigraphy and intact occupation surfaces that provide insights into forager adaptations in the Midsouth from the end of the Pleistocene through the first half of the Holocene. The chronostratigraphic framework for Dust Cave is based on...

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Bibliography

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Correspondence to Sarah C. Sherwood .

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Sherwood, S.C. (2017). Dust Cave, Alabama. In: Gilbert, A.S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geoarchaeology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4409-0_78

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