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Ohio County · Prehistoric · 3000 BCE – 1000 BCE

Indian Knoll on the Green River

Five thousand years before the first stations, Late Archaic hunter-gatherers kept returning to a shell midden on the Green River in Ohio County.

Research notes and sources for the Indian Knoll on the Green River

AI illustration: A Green River Archaic elder in sewn deerskin shaping a bannerstone at a mussel-shell camp on the river, with his dog and atlatl darts nearby
This picture is an AI illustration reconstructed from the available archaeological evidence for the Green River Archaic period in Kentucky; details without direct evidence are informed guesses. See the evidence for this picture AI illustration · Kentucky History Drive

Indian Knoll (15OH2) yielded over a thousand burials, twenty-three dog burials, and more than 50,000 artifacts—spear points, bone pins, marine shell beads, bannerstones—when University of Kentucky crews dug it in the late 1930s WPA years. People hunted deer, gathered hickory nuts, fished, and harvested mussels from the shoals.

In the early 1990s Indian Knoll and nineteen other Green River shell middens became National Historic Landmarks, some of the deepest windows we have on Archaic life in the Ohio Valley.

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Chicago

Snowden, Shannon. "Indian Knoll on the Green River." Kentucky History Drive. Published September 12, 2026. Last revised October 13, 2026. https://kyhistorydrive.com/stories/indian-knoll-on-the-green-river/.

MLA

Snowden, Shannon. "Indian Knoll on the Green River." Kentucky History Drive, published 12 Sept. 2026, last revised 13 Oct. 2026, https://kyhistorydrive.com/stories/indian-knoll-on-the-green-river/.

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