In the 1880s, the Smithsonian Institution team led by John W. Emmert conducted several excavations in the lower Little Tennessee valley, uncovering artifacts and burials related to the valley's 18th-century Overhill Cherokee inhabitants and prehistoric inhabitants.
The Bat Creek site, Smithsonian trinomial designation 40LD24, is a multiphase site with evidence of occupation as early as the Archaic period [REF].