The Archaeology of the Archaic Periods in East Texas

The archaeology of the Archaic periods—Early, ca. 10,000–8000 years B.P., Middle, ca. 8000–5000 years B.P., and Late, ca. 5000–2500 years B.P.—in East Texas is not well understood in broad terms, although valuable information on the archaeological character of the Archaic peoples in the region has been gained over the years from the detailed investigation of a few specific sites. New knowledge concerning the archaeology of the Archaic periods in East Texas is slow in coming, due in part to the kinds of Archaic sites that have been identified by archaeologists during survey investigations and/or recommended by archeologists, state agencies, and federal agencies for further work; a general inability to identify contextually intact buried sites in the valleys of East Texas rivers and creeks; and the lack of development of a chronology based on well–controlled absolute dating of features or buried occupation zones in single component or multi–component stratified sites. This article summarizes what is currently known about Archaic peoples and groups over this lengthy period of time in the East Texas region, including the kinds of sites that have been investigated, their known or estimated chronological age, and their associated material culture remains; it does not attempt to rectify the limitations of the known Archaic archaeological record, but rather judiciously presents archaeological findings from selected sites in East Texas, as well as in northwestern Louisiana. Some broad themes of the Archaic in the Eastern Woodlands and Southeastern U.S. also come under consideration, particularly the lack of complexity and the notable apparent absence of evidence of Archaic ritual beliefs seen in the East Texas archaeological record compared to neighboring regions

The Caddoan Ceramics from the Gray\u27s Pasture Site (41HS524), Harrison County, Texas

This paper discusses the Caddoan ceramics recovered during the 1992 Northeast Texas Archeological Society Field School at the Gray\u27s Pasture site (41HS524) on Clark\u27s Creek, a few miles south of Hallsville, Texas and about 2 miles from the Sabine River floodplain. During the course of the excavations, an extensive Caddoan settlement was documented on a series of knolls on a broad terrace landform overlooking the Clark\u27s Creek floodplain, and each of those areas contains Caddoan ceramics. Most notably, a dense concentration of Caddoan ceramics, as well as two burials with whole ceramic vessels, was encountered in the northwestern part of the site, and the majority of the ceramics are from this area. The four site areas include Areal (Unit 1) on a knoll at the northeastern part of the site, Area II on the terrace at the far eastern end of the site (Units 3 and 7), Area lll on the crest of the landform in the central and southwestern part of the site (Units 2, 5, and 6), and Area IV in the northwestern part of the site (Units 8, 8X, 10-16). Unit 4 belongs in Area III, and contained a number of sherds, but these artifacts are missing, except for one plain sherd. Unit 9, in the southeastern part of the site only had a few plain sherds. A total of 2352 sherds and four vessels comprise the Caddoan ceramic assemblage from Gray\u27s Pasture. This includes 1740 plain body and base sherds, 61 plain rims, and 551 decorated rim and body sherds. About 81% of the sherds are from ArealV, with 9.3% of the sherds from Area III. There are 71 decorated rim sherds and 480 decorated body sherds (not including 11 red slipped sherds). The plain/decorated sherd ratio is 3.27 for the site as a whole, and ranges from 3.21 to 3.69 by site area. This is consistent with other pre-A.D. 1200 Caddoan sites in the Red, middle Sabine, and Neches-Angelina river basins, where such sites have plain/decorated sherd ratios that range between 2.97-4.80. Thirteenth and 14th century sites in these areas have plain/decorated sherd ratios of 1.30- 1.61, and Late Caddoan sites dating between ca. A.D. 1450--1650 have ratios of 0.56- 1.03. Through time, more Caddoan vessels are decorated, and vessels are more completely covered with decoration, rather than having the decoration confined primarily to the rim

The myths and realities of Bayesian chronological modeling revealed

We review the history of Bayesian chronological modeling in archaeology and demonstrate that there has been a surge over the past several years in American archaeological applications. Most of these applications have been performed by archaeologists who are self-taught in this method because formal training opportunities in Bayesian chronological modeling are infrequently provided. We define and address misconceptions about Bayesian chronological modeling that we have encountered in conversations with colleagues and in anonymous reviews, some of which have been expressed in the published literature. Objectivity and scientific rigor is inherent in the Bayesian chronological modeling process. Each stage of this process is described in detail, and we present examples of this process in practice. Our concluding discussion focuses on the potential that Bayesian chronological modeling has for enhancing understandings of important topics

Seriation, Superposition, and Interdigitation: a History of Americanist Graphic Depictions of Culture Change

Histories of Americanist archaeology regularly confuse frequency seriation with a technique for measuring the passage of time based on superposition - percentage stratigraphy - and fail to mention interdigitation as an important component of some percentage-stratigraphic studies. Frequency seriation involves the arrangement of collections so that each artifact type displays a unimodal frequency distribution, but the direction of time\u27s flow must be determined from independent evidence. Percentage stratigraphy plots the fluctuating frequencies of types, but the order of collections is based on their superposition, which in turn illustrates the direction of time\u27s flow. Interdigitation involves the integration of sets of percentage-stratigraphy data from different horizontal proveniences under the rules that (1) the order of superposed collections cannot be reversed and (2) each type must display a unimodal frequency distribution. Ceramic stratigraphy is similar to occurrence seriation, as both focus on the presence-absence of types with limited temporal distributions - index fossils - but the former uses the superposed positions of types to indicate the direction of time\u27s flow, whereas occurrence seriation does not

Neandertal-Modern Human Contact in Western Eurasia: Issues of Dating, Taxonomy, and Cultural Associations

Supporting Assimilation views of Neandertal/modern human interaction, chronostratigraphic reasoning indicates that the “transitional” industries of Europe predate modern human immigration, in agreement with their association with Neandertals in the Châtelperronian at the Grotte du Renne and St.-Césaire. Supporting the Neandertals' species separateness and less developed cognition, those industries are alternatively claimed to relate to pioneer groups of modern humans; the latter would have been the true makers of the precocious instances of symbolic material culture that, under Assimilation, are assigned to the Neandertals. However, the taxonomy of the Kent's Cavern and Grotta del Cavallo dental remains is uncertain, and their poor stratigraphic context precludes dating by association. The opposite happens at the Grotte du Renne, whose stratigraphic integrity is corroborated by both taphonomy and dating. Not questioning that the Early Ahmarian is a cultural proxy for modern humans and a source for the Protoaurignacian of Europe, its claimed emergence ~46–49 ka ago at Kebara refl ects the dating of Middle Paleolithic charcoal—to be expected, because the Early Ahmarian units at the back of the cave are made up of reworked Middle Paleolithic sediments derived from the entrance. The dating of inherited material also explains the old results for the Aurignacian of Willendorf II and Geissenklösterle. At the latter, the dates on anthropically modified samples of the hunted taxa (reindeer and horse) place its Aurignacian occupations in the same time range as elsewhere in Europe, after ~40 ka ago. The hypothesis that Neandertal/modern human contact in Europe resulted in a process of assimilation in connection with the spread of the Protoaurignacian ~41.5 ka ago remains unfalsified.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio