Widely held beliefs about early Cherokee settlement patterns likely incorrect, according to two new studies, says University of Georgia anthropologist

The new research focuses on the year 1721, which is the first point after the earliest contact between the Cherokee and the British but before major economic and social changes the tribe underwent in the late Colonial and early American periods.

Researchers had believed for more than a century that one reason for the towns’ ultimate demise was a steadily declining abundance of natural resources. In particular, the trade of deerskins from the Cherokee to the British for goods increased dramatically as the eighteenth century progressed. Many who studied the settlement patterns deduced that the distance between towns was because of natural resource limitations.

The new studies, using historical data, mathematical models and statistical inference, imply that an overall lack of natural resources was never the problem, with the possible exception of deer, as the 1800s approached. The new information may help explain subsequent settlement patterns in the South as well.