Moore, Christopher R. 2010 Mobility, Facilities, and Trade: Toward Formulating a Coherent Picture of the Green River Archaic. Paper presented at the 67 th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Lexington, Kentucky. Abstract The middle Green River region of western Kentucky is one of the best documented but most misunderstood archaeological regions in eastern North America. Despite 100 years of study, most researchers continue to perceive the Green River Shell Mound Archaic as a homogeneous cultural entity. A closer inspection, however, reveals a much more complicated picture of changing technologies, social institutions, and interpersonal relations leading to a more complex form of social organization. In this paper, I place the Green River Archaic within a diachronic framework in order to provide a perspective on these groups that better contextualizes these changes through time. Title Slide Slide 2 Despite 100 years of archaeological investigations at numerous sites along the Green River and its tributaries, archaeologists still have a limited understanding of and appreciation for the variability represented at these sites (Sassaman 2004:255). Difficulties first became apparent in Webb’s site reports, when he compiled massive trait lists to describe mixed assemblages that he considered to be “pure” and “uncontaminated” by outside archaeological cultures (Webb 1974:235-236). Despite Rolingson’s (1967) attempt to establish a temporal framework for the Green River Archaic, the perception of the Green River sites as belonging to a single cultural group became widespread.