Prehistoric Hunters and Gatherers

Although this booklet draws on Paleoindian research that archaeologists have carried out in Kentucky for over thirty years, it focuses particularly on the results of doctoral research carried out recently in the mountainous portions of Cumberland and Clinton Counties. This research was sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation. The goal of this research was to find out when humans first began to live in the Appalachians and why Kentucky's first inhabitants avoided them. Traditional explanations reference aspects of the region's paleo-environment and modern cultural factors. Yet, results of this research have shown that the process of early colonization and the routes by which the earliest peoples arrived in the Appalachians were just as important.