The Coats–Hines–Litchy site (formerly Coats–Hines) is a paleontological site located in Williamson County, Tennessee, in the Southeastern United States. The site was formerly believed to be archaeological, and identified as one of only a very few locations in Eastern North America containing evidence of Paleoindian hunting of late Pleistocene proboscideans. Excavations at the site have yielded portions of four mastodon skeletons, including portions of one previously described as being in direct association with Paleoindian stone tools. The results of excavations have been published in Tennessee Conservationist, and the scholarly journals Current Research in the Pleistocene, Tennessee Archaeology, and Quaternary Science Reviews. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 12, 2011.
Site summary
The Coats–Hines–Litchy site is located east of I-65 near CoolSprings Galleria in Williamson County, Tennessee. The site was initially recorded in 1977 when several large bones were identified during landscaping at the Crockett Springs Golf Course (now the Nashville Golf and Athletic Club). Salvage work by staff from the Tennessee Division of Archaeology recovered the partial skeleton of a single mature female mastodon (“mastodon A”) from along a small stream drainage. No description of this excavation or the skeletal material was ever published, and the area that contained the remains was subsequently destroyed by earthmoving along the 13th hole of the golf course. In 1994, construction of a subdivision just west of the golf course by the company Hines Interest LP resulted in identification of a well-preserved bone bed of Pleistocene-aged faunal material. The bone bed was situated west of the original mastodon find along a deeply incised portion of the same stream channel, approximately below ground surface. Salvage excavations resulted in the identification of several late ice age species, including horse, deer, muskrat, and the partial, disarticulated remains of a young male mastodon (“mastodon B”) The remains of a third mastodon (“mastodon C”) were identified eroding from the bank line approximately 50 m west of mastodon B, but were not excavated. The site, owned at the time of the 1994 excavation by Gary T. Baker, was assigned state number 40WM31, and named “Coats–Hines” in honor of Tennessee Division of Archaeology staff member Patricia Coats, who participated in the excavation of mastodon A, and the Hines corporation, which facilitated the 1994 salvage work. The site name was expanded to add "Litchy" in 2012 in honor of the landowner. Following excavations, the area that contained mastodon B was backfilled and incorporated into the backyard of a single-family home.
Although Tennessee Division of Archaeology staff continued to monitor the stream drainage, no additional excavations took place at the site until 2008. That year, limited excavations were performed to recover several heavily fragmented bones eroding from the bank line at the location of mastodon C. Poor preservation of the material prevented conclusive identification of the animal’s species, sex, or age. Additional site inspections of the stream channel that same year resulted in the recovery of a bifacial stone tool and a highly mineralized fragment of deer antler. Both items had eroded from their original context and could not conclusively be associated with the Pleistocene bone bed. However, staff from the East Tennessee State University and General Shale Brick Natural History Museum concluded the antler fragment exhibited an extreme level of mineralization, suggesting at least a late Pleistocene origin. This find is noteworthy in that Pleistocene deer have only been recorded at 12 other sites in Tennessee.