About 1,000 years ago, Native Americans known as the Mississippians settled at this location as part of a culture that lived throughout the Southeast and the Mississippi Valley, building large villages and ceremonial earthworks along major rivers. Mississippian settlements are identified by their distinctive pottery types, and their society had a very complex political organization in which larger villages dominated entire river valleys and strongly influenced neighboring villages. An archaeological survey begun in 2004 on the terrace above the Greeneway revealed a significant village site later called Riverfront Village. Full-scale excavations in 2005 and 2006 recovered more than 100,000 artifacts from nearly 5,000 features, including the remains of about 80 houses and surrounding activity areas. Archaeologists also identified six palisade walls, indicating that the village went through several stages of expansion. Radiocarbon dates suggest that the village was probably occupied from about 1,000 to 600 years ago, and then briefly again in the late 1600s. Most artifacts were fragments of broken pottery, stone tools, food remains, and European trade items such as glass beads and brass bells or tinkler cones.