How long have people lived in Lawrence County? Quite a long time.

Most anthropologists believe that Native Americans first came to Tennessee a little more than 12,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age.

For context, if Native presence in Tennessee were an hour on a clock, with the arrival of Native people at 11:00 P.M. and present day at midnight, then David Crockett settled here and Lawrence County’s government was formed a little after 11:58 P.M. and the bulk of our recorded local history has happened in the two minutes since.

That’s a lot of years unaccounted for, and untold thousands of stories which we will never know. The closest we can usually get to knowing anything about the people who lived here in those years is the material culture they left behind. Our county is rich in artifacts left behind by Native people. Generations of Lawrence Countians have turned them up by plow, found them near creeks, and seen them sticking out of hillsides after heavy rains.

In March, I will share the story of a local archaeological dig and what it discovered about local Native people from the things they left behind.

The images above all show arrowheads that I have found in Lawrence County, myself. Have you ever found a Native American artifact in Lawrence County? Share some photos in the comments!