Regions Center (Nashville) - Archaeological Background

Archaeological Background

The Regions Center in Nashville sits atop an archaeological site known as the "First American Cave," or 40DV40. This site was first identified in 1971 after the remains of a saber-toothed cat were discovered during construction of the First American National Bank. The bones were situated within a mud-filled cave located approximately 30-feet below ground surface and surrounded by limestone bedrock. The story of the discovery, as related by Bob Ferguson is as follows:

"…one of the workmen on the site of the new bank building noticed some whitish material in the dipper of his power shovel. He and some of his co-workers stopped work to examine the material. It proved to be bone. One of the workers cleaned one (which was the maxillary canine of Smilodon) and said Boys, we have a saber-tooth tiger here.”

Following identification of the bones, developers halted work and contacted both Vanderbilt University and the Southeastern Indian Antiquities Survey (SIAS). Ferguson and members of the SIAS conducted excavations at the site during the fall of 1971. These excavations resulted in the recovery of more than 1,000 paleofaunal remains, as well as three or four human burials. According to the Tennessee Division of Archaeology site file prepared by John Dowd no stone tools or artifacts were found at the site. The majority of the cave deposits had been destroyed by mechanical equipment prior to identification of the site, and many of the bones were recovered through examination of off-site backdirt piles.

The saber-tooth cat captured the imagination and attention of both the public and the archaeological community. A number of noted archaeologists visited the site following its initial discovery, including Ronald Spores, Kent Flannery, Vance Haynes, and Edwin Williamson. John Guilday of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History conducted an examination of all faunal material recovered from the site, and published the results in the July 1977 issue of the Journal of the Tennessee Academy of Sciences. This article constitutes the only scientific publication on the site, although numerous general-interest articles were produced in both local and national print sources. Although Guilday may have conducted an inventory of the human remains from the site, none was ever published.

Radiocarbon analysis of human remains from the cave returned dates of 2390+/-145 B.P. and 1690+/-115 B.P. These remains were collected from an upper zone approximately 16-feet above the saber-tooth bones. The human remains are believed to be from the Woodland Period and originated thousands of years after the Smilodon find. According to Guilday (1977), collagen from the Smilodon remains returned radiocarbon dates of 9410+/-155 B.P. and 10,035+/-650 B.P. These dates are extremely late for the presence of Smilodon in the Southeast, both contemporaneous with the Dalton horizon and overlapping Paleoindian occupations along the Cumberland River by at least 1,000 years. As such, the dates for the Smilodon remains from the First American site should be regarded with some skepticism.

As a result of interest that the site generated, First American Bank agreed to engineer around the small percentage of cave deposits that had not been destroyed. These deposits were vaulted over using steel and concrete, and preserved in an artificial cavern beneath the lowest parking garage level. An access hatch and ladder provided entry to the space. Newspaper and magazine articles from the early- to mid-1970s show there was clear interest among the archaeological community in conducting further excavations in what remained of the cave. In 1973 Time Magazine reported that the bank was “preparing to let archaeologists resume their digging.”

Unfortunately, it appears that any plans to conduct additional investigations were abandoned around the time bank construction was completed. The final reference to additional excavation occurs in 1976, when Bob Ferguson wrote that he was “certain much remains to be discovered when work resumes in the cavern, so thoughtfully preserved by the First American National Bank.”

In 1978, a group of cavers from the Nashville Grotto visited the site but were underwhelmed by the lack of intact cavern or open passages. The next documented entry into the cave did not occur until 2008, when archaeologists from the Tennessee Division of Archaeology revisited the site.

Regions Bank maintains a display in their first floor lobby that includes bones from the Smilodon and other faunal material from the site. Smilodon remains on display include portions of the lower jaw and molars, vertebral column, ribs, humerus, metacarpals, and metatarsals. A replica of a Smilodon skull from the La Brea Tar Pits serves as the centerpiece of the display. The Smilodon upper canine that led to the site discovery in 1971 is not on display, and is apparently no longer in the bank collection. Conventional wisdom among bank and facility management personnel is that the canine is now in the collection of the Smithsonian; however, that institution holds no record of the artifact.

The find of the Smilodon remains was the impetus for the logo of the Nashville Predators hockey team and their mascot Gnash. Before the team exits the locker room prior to each home game, a video is shown on the jumbotron of a computer-generated saber-tooth tiger emerging from the ground beneath downtown Nashville. The logo for AmSouth (as well as its predecessor, First American) was once prominently featured in the video but was digitally deleted when the bank dropped sponsorship of the team following the 2002-2003 NHL season.