Ben Steere will discuss Cherokee pre-history and archaeology at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 8, in the community room of the Jackson County Public Library.

Steere is the principal investigator for the Western North Carolina Mounds and Towns Project, which is a collaborative effort by the Coweeta Long Term Ecological Research Program at the University of Georgia, the Tribal Historic Preservation Office of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the Cherokee Preservation Foundation, and the Duke Energy Foundation.

Western North Carolina has been continuously occupied for at least 10,000 years and once contained many prehistoric Indian mounds and historic Cherokee town sites. Many of these sites have been damaged by development, and their locations have been lost or forgotten. The goal of the project is to locate these archaeological sites for the purposes of preservation, research, and public outreach.

Steere’s presentation will focus on the archaeology of WNC and specifically how Jackson County fits in to a story of change and continuity in human settlement.

828.586.2016.