Microhistories and Temporal Continuities: A High-Resolution Chronology for Sixteenth-Century Indigenous–Colonizer Dynamics at a Southern Appalachian Town

Abstract

The King site in northwestern Georgia is one of the most fully excavated sixteenth-century Indigenous towns in the southeastern United States. It is also one of the most well-excavated Indigenous towns occupied during the earliest European expeditions into the interior of what is today the United States. Home to ancestors of the Muscogee Nation, the King site serves as an important analytical microcosm to explore the direct and indirect impacts of the earliest encounters between Indigenous communities and Spanish colonizers, as well as to link the deep Indigenous sociopolitical histories of the region to these encounters and to subsequent social, political, and cultural transformations. King’s occupation is traditionally estimated to circa AD 1535–1570. Using 58 new AMS dates from features, including high-resolution tree-ring-radiocarbon dating of preserved wooden house posts, we estimate a modeled start range for occupation at King of cal AD 1370–1435 (68%) and a depopulation sometime after cal AD 1545–1605 . We reconsider the internal history of King and use these new temporalities to link the sixteenth-century sociopolitical landscape to both pre- and postcontact sociopolitical histories. In doing so, we recast narratives of Indigenous–colonizer dynamics, subsequent population movements, and institutional change across the region in the context of European colonization.