PUBLICATION SERIES

Booklets

A series of short booklets written for high school/college students and the general public on diverse Kentucky archaeological sites and topics.

Prices vary between $3.00 and $10.00 (see below). Single copies are available free to teachers for classroom use; discounts are available on orders of 25 or more. Funds from the sale of these booklets will be used to reprint them. Some of the booklets can be downloaded from this page. They also are available for access and downloading at Kentucky Libraries Unbound (KLU) – search by title.

Slack Farm and the Caborn-Welborn People
By David Pollack, Cheryl Ann Munson, and A. Gwynn Henderson (1996)

Describes the lifeways of the late Mississippian Caborn-Welborn people, a village farming society that lived in western Kentucky from about A.D. 1400-1700. Information about the looting of the Slack Farm site and what was learned as a result of research there is also presented. Black and white photographs and drawings illustrate how these people lived. ISBN 978-1-934492-00-0. 30 p.

Kentucky Archaeological Survey Educational Series Number One.

$5.00; Order Form

Mute Stones Speak: Archaic Lifeways of the Encarpment Region in Jackson County, Kentucky
By William E. Sharp and A. Gwynn Henderson (1997)

Describes the lifeways of hunters and gatherers who lived in Eastern Kentucky 8,000 years ago and discusses how archaeologists learn about the past from the artifacts people left behind. Black and white photographs and drawings. ISBN 978-1-934492-01-7. 16 p.

Kentucky Archaeological Survey Educational Series Number Two, prepared in cooperation with the U.S. Forest Service.

$3.00; Order Form

Prehistoric Hunters and Gatherers: Kentucky’s First Pioneers
By Leon Lane, Eric J. Schlarb, and A. Gwynn Henderson (1998)

Draws on Paleoindian research carried out in Kentucky in general and the mountainous portions of Cumberland and Clinton counties in particular. Focusing exclusively on Paleoindian and Early Archaic lifeways, it presents a new explanation for how the earliest peoples colonized and settled Kentucky. Black and white photographs and drawings. ISBN 978-1-934492-02-4. 16 p. pdf available here.

Kentucky Archaeological Survey Educational Series Number Three.

$3.00; Order Form

Forests, Forest Fires, & Their Makers: The Story of Cliff Place Pond, Jackson County, Kentucky
By Paul A. Delcourt, Hazel R. Delcourt, Cecil R. Ison, William E. Sharp, and A. Gwynn Henderson (1999)

This booklet tells the 10,000-year long environmental and human story of Keener Point Knob, based on research carried out at a small ridgetop pond and nearby rockshelters by paleoecologists, archaeologists, and fire ecologists. It describes the changes in forest vegetation brought about by changes in climate and through prehistoric peoples’ use of fire to manipulate the forest as they turned to a gardening way of life. Also discusses how paleoecologists and archaeologists go about their research. Black and white photographs and drawings. ISBN 978-1-934492-03-1.28 p.

Kentucky Archaeological Survey Educational Series Number Four, prepared in cooperation with the U.S. Forest Service.

$5.00; Order Form

Taming Yellow Creek: Alexander Arthur, the Yellow Creek Canal & Middlesborough, Kentucky County, Kentucky
By Maria Campbell Brent (2002)

Presents the history of Alexander Arthur’s attempts to build a modern city in the mountains of Bell County in the late 1800s during America’s “Guilded Age”. Illustrated with black and white archival photographs. ISBN 978-1-934492-04-8. 30 p. pdf available here.

Kentucky Archaeological Survey Educational Series Number Five, prepared in cooperation with the Army Corps of Engineers, Nashville District.

$5.00; Order Form

Bringing the Past into the Future: The Reconstruction of the Detached Kitchen at Riverside.
By Patti Linn and M. Jay Stottman (2003)

Descibes the discovery, reconstruction, and interpretation of Riverside’s first (circa the late 1830s) detached kitchen. Archaeologists, historians, local volunteers and area school children collaborated on this fascinating project. Illustrated with black and white photographs, which are archival. ISBN 978-1-934492-05-5. 34p

Kentucky Archaeological Survey Educational Series Number Six, prepared in cooperation with Riverside: The Farnsley-Moremen Landing.

$5.00; Order Form 

Hunters and Gatherers of the Green River Valley
By A. Gwynn Henderson and Rich Burdin (2006)

Drawing on a wealth of information collected from the region’s world famous shell midden sites, the authors describe the prehistoric lifeways, technology, and health of the people who lived in west-central Kentucky 5,000 years ago. Illustrated with black and white photographs, many of which are archival, and original line drawings. ISBN 978-1-934492-06-2. 32 p. pdf available here.

Kentucky Archaeological Survey Educational Series Number Seven, prepared in cooperation with the William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology and with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

$5.00; Order Form

The Prehistoric Farmers of Boone County, Kentucky
By A. Gwynn Henderson (2006)

This booklet discusses the history of the Fort Ancient people (A.D. 1000-1750), touching on their houses, the layout of their villages, their foodways and technology, their health and diseases, their social and political organization, what they traded, and their religious beliefs. Features information recovered from the 2004 investigations of a prehistoric village disturbed by the construction of a basement in Petersburg, Kentucky. Color. ISBN 978-1-934492-07-9. 48 p. pdf available here.

Kentucky Archaeological Survey Educational Series Number Eight, produced at the request of the Boone County Historic Preservation Review Board and funded in part by a Federal Survey and Planning Grant to the board from the Kentucky Heritage Council and the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet.

$7.00; Order Form

Adena: Woodland Period Moundbuilders of the Bluegrass
By A. Gwynn Henderson and Eric J. Schlarb (2007)

Describes the lifeways, ritual sites, and burial practices of the Adena people, a hunting-gathering-gardening culture that built large earthen burial mounds in central Kentucky from 500 B.C. to A.D. 200. Color. ISBN 978-1-934492-08-6. 48 p. pdf available here

Kentucky Archaeological Survey Educational Series Number Nine. The Institute of Museum and Library Services, Museums for America program and Kentucky Transportation Cabinet funded this publication.

$7.00; Out of Print

Frankfort’s Forgotten Cemetery
By David Pollack, A. Gwynn Henderson, and Peter E. Killoran (2009)

Reports on the re-discovery of a mid-nineteenth century cemetery that lay beneath buildings and parking lots in downtown Frankfort. The Old Frankfort cemetery was an integrated burial ground for working class people of African, European, and mixed heritage. This booklet illustrates what can be learned from the study of human bones and provides portraits of some of the deceased by the project’s forensic artist. Color. ISBN 978-1-934492-09-3. 72 p. Larger format. pdf available here.

Kentucky Archaeological Survey Educational Series Number Ten. The Commonwealth of Kentucky’s Finance Cabinet funded the preparation and printing of this publication.

$10.00;  Order Form

Books

Kentuckians Before Boone
By A. Gwynn Henderson (1992)

This book describes the lives of one Native American family in central Kentucky in the year 1585. Fishes-With-Hands, his wife She-Who-Watches, and their family grind corn, make cooking pots, and build their homes while in their summer village. In autumn, they attend the funeral and mourning feast of Masked-Eyes. Then they move to their winter hunting camp, where they process nuts, make arrows, and hunt and butcher animals in preparation for the winter. Readers will soon realize that their lives and experiences in many ways parallel those of this family from Kentucky’s not-so-distant past.

$5.95 from The University Press of Kentucky, 663 South Limestone, Lexington, KY, 40508-4008; Order Form

About New Books for New Readers

Kentucky Humanities’ award-winning New Books for New Readers is a series of 13 books written at a 4th-grade reading level for adult literacy students. The 64-page books are written by scholars with the help of literacy students and their tutors, and cover topics in Kentucky history, literature, and folklore.

The titles are written with a simplicity of sentence and language but with a complexity of vision. Experienced readers find the topics so interesting, they do not notice that the text is 4th grade level. For a complete story of New Books for New Readers, click here.

Kentucky School teachers have found that these books are particularly useful in the classroom. In the words of one teacher, “I think Kentuckians Before Boone would be perfect to use in teaching reading, social studies, and history at the same time.” Kentuckians Before Boone is also notable because there is no other text about Kentucky’s original people available to teachers who must address the topic.

Spotlights

Occasional publications written for high school/college students and the general public. These full-color, richly illustrated documents (with maps, original artwork, historic images, and artifacts) are prepared at the request of the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Accessible as downloadable pdfs below (14 to 19 pages in length), the Spotlights present discoveries at diverse Kentucky archaeological sites located in new road right-of-ways.

Spotlight No. 1
Ribbon of History: The Maysville to Lexington Road
By A. Gwynn Henderson and Nancy O’Malley

An overview of the history and archaeology of the Maysville to Lexington Road and its corridor (Bourbon, Fayette, Fleming, Mason, Nicholas, and Robertson counties in Central Kentucky).

Spotlight No. 2
Early Inns And Homes: Along The Maysville To Lexington Trace
By A. Gwynn Henderson and Nancy O’Malley

An overview of investigations at archaeological sites along the Maysville to Lexington Road. It focuses on two inns and two dwellings dating from the late eighteenth to early to mid twentieth century in Bourbon County in Central Kentucky.

Spotlight No. 5
Uncovering The Lives of Kentucky’s Enslaved People
By M. Jay Stottman and Lori C. Stahlgren

A summary of archaeological research carried out at a typical early to late nineteenth century Kentucky plantation in Jessamine County in Central Kentucky. It focuses on the lifeways of the enslaved African Americans who lived and worked there.

Spotlight No. 6
Something Unexpected: Investigating the 8,500-Year-Old Canton Site in Trigg County, Kentucky
By Eric J. Schlarb, A. Gwynn Henderson, and David Pollack

A summary of archaeological research at an ancient base camp in Trigg County in Western Kentucky, which was occupied by hunter-gatherers between 8,500 and 8,200 years ago. It explores why Native peoples lived at this site and describes the discovery of new spear point variants linked to the emergence of regional Native societies.