[3] This era of protohistory saw the arrival of Europeans in North America, although by the time they made it to this area, the village had been long abandoned.

The Hardin Village site is located on the large flat 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) wide floodplain terrace of the Ohio River, a little over 3 miles (4.8 km) from present day South Shore, Kentucky.

[1] Like other Fort Ancient villages it had a defensive palisade surrounding it, but unlike other sites it does not seem to have had a central oval plaza.

Women would use ground mussel shell as a tempering agent, it was added to wet clay and finely kneaded in.

It was then decorated with a variety of methods such as engraving designs with a sharpened stick, cordmarking with twine, stamping, and beating with a wooden paddle.

[4] Analysis of these burials has shown that Fort Ancient peoples were not as healthy as their less agrarian ancestors, a byproduct of their heavy dependence on maize agriculture.

The chronic malnutrition and niacin deficiency caused by the eating of maize as their major food source caused many of the Fort Ancient peoples to have high rates of arthritis, dental diseases, lower life expectancies and a high infant mortality.

This chronic malnutrition also made them prone to other infections, such as tuberculosis (which only a few specimens exhibited) and treponematosis (a non venereal form of yaws or syphilis) a disease which many were found to have been afflicted with.