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Turk Site

Archaeological site in Kentucky, US

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The Turk Site (15CE6) is a Mississippian culture archaeological site located near Bardwell in Carlisle County, Kentucky, on a bluff spur overlooking the Mississippi River floodplain.

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The 2.5 hectares (6.2 acres) site was occupied primarily during the Dorena Phase (1100 to 1300 CE) and into the Medley Phase (1300-1500 CE) of the local chronology. Its inhabitants may have moved from the Marshall Site, which is a slightly older settlement located on the nearest adjacent bluff spur.

For a regional administrative center, Turk is a small site, but this is because of constraints placed on it by the geography of the bluff spur it sits on. The layout of the site is characteristically Mississippian, with a number of platform mounds surrounding a central plaza.

The earliest published investigation at the site was that of Robert Loughridge, published in 1888; the most extensive work at the site was conducted under Richard Edging and published in 1985.

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This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article Turk Site, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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Related topics

National Register of Historic Places listings in Carlisle County, Kentucky

This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Carlisle County, Kentucky. It is intended to be a complete list of the properties on the National Register of Historic Places in Carlisle County, Kentucky, United States.

Mississippian stone statuary

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Southeastern Ceremonial Complex

Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, abbreviated S.E.C.C., is the name given by modern scholars to the regional stylistic similarity of artifacts, iconography, ceremonies, and mythology of the Mississippian culture. It coincided with their adoption of maize agriculture and chiefdom-level complex social organization from 1200 to 1650 CE. Due to some similarities between S.E.C.C. and contemporary Mesoamerican cultures (i.e., artwork with similar aesthetics or motifs; maize-based agriculture; and the development of sophisticated cities with large pyramidal structures), scholars from the late 1800s to mid-1900s suspected there was a connection between the two locations.