The Middle Cumberland River Valley (MCRV) of Tennessee comprises a unique regional environment that has continually supported human occupation along the natural river levees and adjacent terrace landforms since the Late Pleistocene. Over thousands of years Archaic period inhabitants of the MCRV harvested the invertebrate species that populated the streams and waterways of the region, using them for subsistence and raw materials and taking an active role in managing the riverine resources. The cumulative result of this process appears in the archaeological record as abundant and often-dense deposits of invertebrate zooarchaeological remains. However, few formal archaeological investigations have been conducted on Archaic shell-bearing sites in the region. In this field report we present initial results of site file analysis, radiocarbon dating, and species composition research in order to introduce the MCRV manifestation of the cultural phase traditionally known as the Shell Mound Archaic.