Icehouse Bottom
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Icehouse Bottom Site
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Excavation work at the Icehouse Bottom site
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| Location | Monroe County, Tennessee |
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| Nearest city | Vonore |
| Coordinates | 35°35′32″N 84°11′56″W / 35.59222°N 84.19889°WCoordinates: 35°35′32″N 84°11′56″W / 35.59222°N 84.19889°W |
| Built | circa 7500 BC |
| NRHP reference # | 78002615 |
| Added to NRHP | 1978 |
Icehouse Bottom is a prehistoric Native American site in Monroe County, Tennessee, located on the Little Tennessee River in the southeastern United States. Native Americans were using the site as a semi-permanent hunting camp as early as 7500 BC, making it one of the oldest-known habitation areas in what is now the state of Tennessee. Analysis of the site's Woodland period (1000 BC - 1000 AD) artifacts shows evidence of an extensive trade network that reached to indigenous peoples in Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio. This was later an area of known Cherokee settlements, the historic people encountered by Anglo-European settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Since 1979, the Icehouse Bottom site has been submerged by Tellico Lake, an impoundment of the Little Tennessee River created by the construction of Tellico Dam. Excavations were conducted at the site in the early 1970s prior to dam construction, in anticipation of inundation. Tellico Lake was developed by and is managed by the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the shoreline immediately above the Icehouse Bottom site is part of the McGhee-Carson Unit of the Tellico Lake Wildlife Management Area, which is managed by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.
The Little Tennessee River enters Monroe County from the east, where it has sliced a gap between the Great Smoky Mountains and the Unicoi Mountains. It winds westward for some 40 miles (64 km) before emptying into the Tennessee River near Lenoir City. Tellico Lake, created in 1979, covers the lower 33 miles (53 km) of the Little Tennessee and the lower 22 miles (35 km) of the Tellico River.
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