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1 results

  • Talking stones: Cherokee syllabary in Manitou Cave, Alabama

  • Beau Duke Carroll, Alan Cressler, Tom Belt, Julie Reed, Jan F. Simek
  • Journal:
    Antiquity / Volume 93 / Issue 368 / April 2019
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    10 April 2019, pp. 519-536
    Print publication:
    April 2019
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  • Inside Manitou Cave in modern Alabama, nineteenth-century Cherokees carried out sacred ceremonies, recording their activities on the walls using Cherokee syllabary, a system invented in nearby Willstown by Cherokee scholar Sequoyah. Through collaboration between modern Cherokee scholars and Euro-American archaeologists, the authors report and interpret—for the first time—the inscriptions in Manitou Cave. These reveal evidence for secluded ceremonial activities at a time of crisis for the Cherokee. Pressures from the surrounding white populations disrupted the Cherokee ancient lifeways, culminating in their forcible relocation in the 1830s along the Trail of Tears.