Slack Farm

Slack Farm
(15 UN 28)
	Caborn-Welborn culture and some of its larger sites. Slack Farm is on the southern bank of the river.
	Location within Kentucky today
Location	Uniontown, Kentucky, Union County, Kentucky, US
Region	Union County, Kentucky
Coordinates	37°46′11.03″N 88°0′28.12″W / 37.7697306°N 88.0078111°W
History
Founded	1400 CE
Cultures	Caborn-Welborn variant of the Mississippian culture
Site notes
Architecture
Architectural styles	Platform mound
	Responsible body: private

Slack Farm (15 UN 28) is an archaeological site of the Caborn-Welborn variant of the Mississippian culture. Slack Farm is located near Uniontown, Kentucky, close to the confluence of the Ohio River and the Wabash Rivers. The site included a Native American mound and an extensive village occupation dating between 1400 and 1650 CE. Although Slack Farm was long known to be one of the major villages of the Caborn-Welborn people, it became famous when it was very seriously damaged by looters in 1987.

Description

The Slack Farm site is located on a projecting terrace and adjacent levee 300 metres (980 ft) from the Ohio River. There was a mound (Site 15 UN 70) located on the bluff overlooking the site. The Slack Farm site itself consisted of seven discrete village areas surrounding a central plaza and covering roughly 14 ha. A shallow ravine bisects the site running from the west to the south. Houses were typical Mississippian rectangular wall trench wattle and daub structures set in shallow basins. Many had prepared clay hearths. Located near most houses were special pits used to store maize and other dried foods. The pits were large enough to have stored enough grain to feed 7 to 12 people for a year.^[1]

Graves

Each section of the large village maintained its own cemetery. Burials were typically in extended positions. They were often laid out in parallel rows and the absence of overlapping burials suggests that they were marked in some way. Grave goods such as limestone disc pipes, shell beads and ear plugs, as well as small pottery jars were often included, usually near the body's upper torso. In Late Caborn-Welborn times, European trade goods such as glass beads, copper/brass bracelets and tubes were deposited in the graves. During the 1987 looting, 650 to 750 graves were opened by the looters. Given the fact that infants and children are under-represented in this total, archaeologists speculate that as many as a thousand or more people could have been buried at the seven cemeteries at the site.^[1]

1987 looting and its effects

In 1987 the ten looters of Slack Farm paid $10,000 to a new landowner of the Slack Farm property for the right to dig at the site. After renting a tractor, the ten individuals spent two months destroying hundreds of Native American graves, Mississippian culture houses, and unknown other artifacts. Local complaints by the people of Uniontown led to the arrest of the perpetrators for the misdemeanor of "desecrating a venerable object" (a charge which is now a felony, in part due to the controversy over Slack Farm). Prosecution on this charge was difficult in the late 1980s, in part because this predated the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and related state legislation, which made it clearer that such activities were illegal.

The looting of Slack Farm contributed to the passage of more stringent laws in the state of Kentucky relating to the protection of burials, sacred grounds, and indigenous/archaeological sites. The damage done to Slack Farm attracted worldwide attention and was written about in National Geographic magazine,^[2] prompting widespread outcry against illicit removal of antiquities.

The hundreds of broken bones were reburied by Native American groups. As of May 2007, Native American groups still meet in the area to commemorate the site and mourn the damage done.

References

^ ^a ^b Pollack, David (2004). Caborn-Welborn – Constructing a New Society after the Angel Chiefdom Collapse. University of Alabama Press. pp. 101–106. ISBN 0-8173-5126-4.
^ National Geographic Magazine, March 1989

External links

Society for American Archaeology: Preserving the Past for the Future
Anthropologist Brian M. Fagan explains the Slack Farm Tragedy in three parts
Kentucky Burial Laws
Archaeological vandalism in the Southeast
Purifying the Slack Farm: Native Americans continuing to celebrate the site

[CABORNWELBORN-1] Pollack, David (2004). Caborn-Welborn – Constructing a New Society after the Angel Chiefdom Collapse. University of Alabama Press. pp. 101–106. ISBN 0-8173-5126-4.

[2] National Geographic Magazine, March 1989

[1]

[2]

v t e Pre-Columbian North America
Periods Lithic Archaic Formative Classic Post-Classic
Archaeological cultures	Adena Alachua Ancient Beringian Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) Anishinaabe Avonlea Baytown Belle Glade Buttermilk Creek complex Caborn-Welborn Cades Pond Calf Creek Caloosahatchee Clovis Coles Creek Comondú Deptford Folsom Fort Ancient Fort Walton Fremont Glacial Kame Glades Hohokam Hopewell List of Hopewell sites La Jolla Las Palmas Maritime Archaic Mississippian List of Mississippian sites Mogollon Monongahela Old Cordilleran Oneota Paleo-Arctic Paleo-Indians Patayan Plano Plaquemine Poverty Point Red Ocher Safety Harbor Santa Rosa-Swift Creek St. Johns Steed-Kisker Suwannee Valley Tchefuncte Troyville Weeden Island
Archaeological sites	Angel Mounds Anzick site Bandelier National Monument Bastian Benson Blue Spring Shelter Bluefish Caves The Bluff Point Stoneworks Brewster Cahokia Candelaria Cave Casa Grande Chaco Canyon Coso Rock Art District Crystal River Cuarenta Casas Cueva de la Olla Cutler Eaker El Fin del Mundo El Vallecito Effigy Mounds Etowah Indian Mounds Eva Folsom Fort Ancient Fort Center Fort Juelson Four Mounds Gila Cliff Dwellings Glenwood Grimes Point Helen Blazes Holly Bluff Hopewell Culture National Historical Park Horr's Island Huápoca Key Marco Kimball Village Kincaid Mounds Kolomoki Mounds Lake Jackson Mounds Lehner Mammoth-Kill Site L'Anse aux Meadows Lynch Quarry Site Marksville Marmes Rockshelter Meadowcroft Rockshelter Mesa Verde Moaning Cavern Moorehead Circle Morrison Mounds Moundville Mummy Cave Nodena site Ocmulgee Mounds Old Stone Fort Orwell site Paquime Painted Bluff Parkin Park Pinson Mounds Plum Bayou Mounds Portsmouth Earthworks Poverty Point Pueblo Bonito Rassawek Recapture Canyon River Styx Roberts Island Rock Eagle Rock Hawk Rosenstock Village Russell Cave Salmon Ruins Serpent Mound Sierra de San Francisco Shell ring sites Spiro Mounds Stallings Island SunWatch Taos Pueblo Town Creek Indian Mound Turkey River Mounds Upward Sun River Velda Mound West Oak Forest Earthlodge Wickiup Hill Windover Winterville Wupatki
Human remains	Anzick-1 Arlington Springs Man Buhl Woman Kennewick Man La Brea Woman Leanderthal Lady Melbourne Man Minnesota Woman Peñon woman Spirit Cave mummy Vero man
Miscellaneous	Aridoamerica Ballgame Black drink Ceremonial pipe Chanunpa Chunkey Clovis point Container Revolution Eastern Agricultural Complex Eden point Effigy mound Falcon dancer Folsom point Green Corn Ceremony Horned Serpent Kiva Medicine wheel Metallurgy Mi'kmaq hieroglyphic writing Mound Builders N.A.G.P.R.A. Norse colonization of North America Oasisamerica Piasa Projectile point Southeastern Ceremonial Complex Stickball Three Sisters agriculture Thunderbird Transoceanic contact Underwater panther Water glyphs
Related Genetic history Pre-Columbian era

Description

Graves

1987 looting and its effects

See also

References

External links