National Museum of the American Indian

Nacoochee Mound excavation photographs

Summary

Collection ID:
NMAI.AC.001.007
Creators:
Heye, George G. (George Gustav), 1874-1957
Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation
Dates:
1915
Languages:
English
.
Physical Description:
13 Photographic prints
silver gelatin
120 Glass plate negatives
125 Copy negatives
acetate
Repository:
The photographs in this collection document the excavation of the Nacoochee Mound, located along the banks of the upper Chattahoochee River in the mountains of northeast Georgia, in the summer of 1915. The excavation was a joint project between the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation and the Bureau of American Ethnology.

Scope and Contents

Scope and Contents
The Nacoochee Mound excavation photographs consists of glass plate negatives, photographic prints and copy negatives related to the joint effort of the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology to excavate the mound in the summer of 1915. The photographic materials primarily depict the mound photographed from various directions before and during excavation, but also objects and antiquities exhumed from the mound and members of the field team posed singly and as a group on the mound site, including George G. Heye and his wife Thea Heye. Any photographs that include images of burials or human remains have been restricted. Other MAI staff photographed include Frederick Webb Hodge, Charles Turbyfill and Edwin Coffin. George Gustav Heye is listed as the photographer but it is much more likely that George Hubbard Pepper or another one of the MAI staff shot the photographs.
Glass negatives include N00478-N00597. The copy negatives (acetate) have the same N #'s as the glass plate negatives and also include N34266, N36690-N36693, which are copies of the photographic prints. These copy negatives were made by the Museum of the American Indian sometime in the 1960s as part of a large photograph conservation project. Silver gelatin prints include P11593-P11605.

Arrangement note

Arrangement note
Arranged by catalog number.

Biographical/Historical note

Biographical/Historical note
Between May and October of 1915, the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology collaborated to excavate the Nacoochee Mound, located in the Nacooche Valley along the upper Chattahoochee River in northeast Georgia. One of the earliest scientific excavations of its kind in the state of Georgia, the Nacoochee Mound excavation was headed by Frederick Webb Hodge and George Hubbard Pepper and found evidence of at least two mound stages with a total of seventy-five human burials, some of them intrusive from a later time. George Heye, Hodge, and Pepper's co-authored paper, "The Nacoochee Mound in Georgia," appeared in vol. 4, no. 3 of Contributions from the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation.
Although there is also evidence for previous occupation, archaeological evidence at the Nacoochee Mound site and the nearby Eastwood site suggests that these two mound sites probably served as local, primarily administrative, centers during the Middle Lamar Period (approximately late fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries). (particularly Eastwood) The village around Nacoochee Mound has not been excavated but is possibly the site of Nacoochee or Chota, two Cherokee villages documented by Colonel George Chicken's 1715 expedition. These two towns continued to appear on maps until the mid-eighteenth century but were abandoned shortly thereafter.

Administration

Author
Rachel Menyuk
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The negatives are field photographs created by the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation in 1915. It is still not clear when or how the photographic prints came to the Museum of the American Indian, though they were cataloged sometime around 1935.
Processing Information note
Collection recorded updated by Rachel Menyuk, Processing Archivist, in 2019.
Separated Materials
See George Pepper's field notes from the Nacoochee Mound, 1915 in the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation records (NMAI.AC.001) in Box 191, Folder 4-8. All archaeological materials from this excavation can be found in NMAI's archaeology collections.

Using the Collection

Conditions Governing Access note
Access to NMAI Archive Center collections is by appointment only, Monday - Friday, 9:30 am - 4:30 pm. Please contact the archives to make an appointment (phone: 301-238-1400, email: nmaiarchives@si.edu). Some photographs are restricted due to cultural sensitivity.
Conditions Governing Use note
Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center. Please submit a written request to nmaiphotos@si.edu. For personal or classroom use, users are invited to download, print, photocopy, and distribute the images that are available online without prior written permission, provided that the files are not modified in any way, the Smithsonian Institution copyright notice (where applicable) is included, and the source of the image is identified as the National Museum of the American Indian. For more information please see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use and NMAI Archive Center's Digital Image request website.
Preferred Citation note
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Nacoochee Mound excavation photographs, Item Number; National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center, Smithsonian Institution.

Keywords

Keywords table of terms and types.
Keyword Terms Keyword Types
Excavations (Archaeology) -- Georgia -- Nacoochee Valley (Ga.) Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Mounds -- Georgia -- Nacoochee Valley (Ga.) Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Mississippian Tradition (archaeological culture) Cultural Context Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Antiquities -- Georgia -- Nacoochee Valley (Ga.) Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Indians of North America -- Georgia Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Indians of North America -- Georgia -- Nacoochee Valley (Ga.) -- Antiqiuties Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Slides (photographs) Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Nacoochee Valley (Ga.) Geographic Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Photographic prints Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Photographs Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Black-and-white negatives Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Nacoochee Mound Expedition, 1915 Corporate Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Heye, Thea Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Hodge, Frederick Webb, 1864-1956 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Coffin, Edwin F. (Edwin Francis), b. 1883 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Turbyfill, Charles Orr, 1888-1966 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Pepper, George H. (George Hubbard), 1873-1924 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid

National Museum of the American Indian
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Suitland, Maryland 20746-2863
nmaiarchives@si.edu