In January 1934 archaeological work began on the Norris and Wheeler Reservoirs to identify and collect Indian remains and artifacts that were buried in ground anticipated to be flooded by TVA Lakes. The work was under the general direction of William S. Webb, and Thomas M. N. Lewis was hired as the supervisor of the Norris Basin investigation, with the University of Tennessee to be the repository of excavated materials and records. In the fall of 1934, UT hired T. M. N. Lewis as assistant professor of anthropology in the History Department. He held the AB degree from Princeton and had completed a year of graduate work at the University of Wisconsin. He came to Tennessee from the Milwaukee Public Museum. He succeeded William Webb as the head of the project.
From 1938 to 1942, excavations of hundreds of sites were made primarily with WPA funding. UT established an archaeology laboratory in 1938 for study of the artifacts and remains, and Madeline Kneberg was hired to direct the laboratory activities and as a faculty member in the Division of Anthropology within the History Department. In 1947 a Department of Anthropology was established, with Thomas M. N. Lewis as head and Madeline Kneberg as the only other faculty member. Lewis and Kneberg studied more than one hundred thousand artifacts. They developed and published a detailed laboratory procedures manual that included an attribute-based classification system, techniques for pottery reconstruction, and a system for collections management.
In 1958 they published the book Tribes That Slumber: Indian Times in the Tennessee Region, which was the first nontechnical publication of its kind to give a complete account of the Indians of a widespread region such as the Tennessee Valley. The book was illustrated with 107 original drawings and paintings by Professor Kneberg and with 26 maps and photographs by Professor Lewis. The title comes from William Cullen Bryant’s poem “Thanatopsis,” which reads: “All that tread the globe are but a handful to the tribes that slumber in its bosom.” Both Lewis and Kneberg published papers and books based on the excavations and their laboratory analyses, most being authored by the duo. In 1961, shortly after the completion of the Frank H. McClung Museum, which was designed to house the anthropology lab and Department of Anthropology, Lewis and Kneberg were married, retired from UT, and moved to Florida.
Thomas M. N. Lewis was a founder of the Society for American Archaeology, and his signature is the first of the 31 on the constitution of the society, adopted in December 1934.