Cherokee of the Cumberland

About the Author:
Dr. Kenneth Barnett Tankersley is an enrolled member of the Piqua Shawnee tribe of Alabama. He received his B.S. and M.A. degrees from the University of Cincinnati and a Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1989. He did postdoctoral work at the Quaternary Studies Program of the Illinois State Museum. With funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, Earthwatch, the International Research and Exchange Program, the Court Family Foundation, the Charles Phelps Taft Foundation, and the University of Cincinnati Research Council, he has conducted archaeological investigations across the Western Hemisphere and Eastern Siberia. This research has resulted in more than 160 professional publications and it has been featured on the National Geographic Channel, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, the Animal Planet, BBC Nature, NOVA, PBS, in Science, National Geographic News, Geo, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker magazine, Scientific American, Archaeology magazine, and on All Things Considered. He has served as a Foreign Delegate for the National Academy of Science, a Delegate of the International Geology Congress, a Carnegie Mellon Scholar, Emmons Lecturer, guest editor of Scientific American magazine, and a Gubernatorial appointed member of the Kentucky Native American Heritage Commission. He is an associate professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Geology, a Fellow of the Graduate School, and Curator, Court Archaeological Research Facility at the University of Cincinnati.