Prehistoric Kanawha Valley Adena people, also called Mound Builders, lived in the Kanawha Valley during the Woodland Period from 500 B.C. to A.D. 1, though they were not the first inhabitants, as Archaic era encampments dating from 8,500 B.C. to 1,000 B.C. have been found along the Kanawha River, including nearby St. Albans. Small Adena farmsteads were scattered along the Kanawha River Valley, where fish and small game were abundant, and unlike the hunter-gatherer Archaic people, the Adena grew crops, allowing them to remain in one place longer and build semi permanent dwellings. Numerous earthworks and more than 50 burial mounds reflected the innovation and ingenuity of the Kanawha Valley Adena, who built them without modern equipment, and these burial mounds show that they honored their dead and recognized a social hierarchy. Deer hide was used to make loincloths for men and skirts for women, both wore animal skin robes in cold weather, textiles were made from fibrous plants such as milkweed, and seashells traded from the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico sometimes decorated clothing. Adena wigwams were made by setting poles into the ground and bending and tying them at the top to form circular frames from 13 to 32 feet in diameter, then covering them with large slabs of tree bark or mats woven from cattails and bulrush.