prior to excavation, historians had thought that tomotley was founded by refugees from the cherokee middle, lower, or valley towns when they fled warfare with the creek and later the english, whose attacks destroyed their towns in the mid-18th century. the goals of the 1976 excavations were to shed light on this theory by determining the location and structure of tomotley's councilhouse, analyzing tomotley's cherokee dwellings, and establishing the general layout of the village.