Book Review Don\u27t Know Much About Caddo Archeology, Don\u27t Know Much ....

In an otherwise interesting and recently published book by Judith Nies entitled Native American History, there is an extremely wide-of-the-mark discussion of the Spiro site which I would like to share with the readers of Caddoan Archeology. The inaccuracy of the presentation conveys all too well, unfortunately, how little is still known about Caddoan archeology, and about the Caddo peoples, among the general public and the general reader

A Ceramic Sherd Assemblage from a Caddo Site in the Upper Neches River Basin, Henderson County, Texas

This article reports on a collection of ancestral Caddo artifacts from an unrecorded site in the upper Neches River basin in northeastern Henderson County in East Texas. The collection had been found by landowners on an unreported Caddo site in this locale—which appears to be in the Caddo Creek valley west of the Neches River—and the collection was recently relocated by Debbie Shelley of Frankston, Texas. Mrs. Shelley brought the collection to the 2015 East Texas Archeological Conference, and provided the opportunity to fully document the ceramic and lithic artifacts in the collection

Caddo Vessels from the Susie Slade Site (41HS13), Harrison County, Texas

The Susie Slade site (41HS13) is an ancestral Nadaco Caddo settlement and cemetery on a sandy knoll in the Potters Creek valley in the Sabine River basin. The site is known to have had a large cemetery (\u3e 90 burials) that was excavated by a number of East Texas collectors and amateur archaeologists in 1962, University of Texas (UT) archaeologists; one burial reportedly had 36 stacked Simms Engraved vessels as funerary offerings. Ceramic vessels from the UT investigations at the Susie Slade site are in the collections of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL), along with vessels donated to TARL by Forrest Murphey, one of the amateur archaeologists that worked at the site. These vessels are documented in this article, following the standard protocol for vessel documentation in use for several years in the analysis of Caddo ceramic vessels from East Texas sites

Early Sixteenth Century Caddo Population Distributions

Milner’s (2015:Figure 2.1) summary of the distribution of Native American population aggregates in eastern North America in the early sixteenth century depicts much of the southern Caddo area (of southwestern Arkansas, northwestern Louisiana, southeastern Oklahoma, and East Texas) as being sparsely settled or uninhabited in the early sixteenth century. Rather, as attested to by many years of archaeological investigations of a variety of Caddo sites across the southern Caddo area, as well as the 1542 accounts of the de Soto-Moscoso entrada, the distribution and density of Caddo farming groups and communities reached its full and peak extent at around this time

41SM150: A Middle Caddo Period Site in the Angelina River Basin, Smith County, Texas

Site 41SM150 is an ancestral Caddo settlement and cemetery in the headwaters of the Angelina River basin in East Texas. The site was recorded by Jan Guy in 1983 as part of a University of Texas at Austin Field School, when a collector who was working at the site shared information about what he, and others, had been finding there. Apparently the site had been worked by collectors for approximately 30 years by that time. The current condition of the site is not known. The site, including both habitation and cemetery areas, is located just south of a large knoll on an alluvial terrace on the north side of the Kickapoo Creek valley. Kickapoo Creek is a westward-flowing tributary of Mud Creek in the Angelina River basin. The site area had been cultivated in the past, but in 1983 was overgrown, with weeds and pine trees

East Texas Caddo Ceramic Sherd Database

A considerable amount of effort has been expended over the years by archaeologists in the identification, description, and classification of ancestral Caddo ceramic vessels and sherds recovered from sites across East Texas, beginning with the masterful efforts of Alex D. Krieger. These analyses have led to an appreciation of the stylistic, technological, functional, and morphological character of Caddo ceramics, as well as their age, and their role in the identification and scale of social networks of different Caddo communities in existence as early as ca. A.D. 850 to the early 19th century. The purpose of the compilation of attribute-level data on Caddo ceramic sherds in East Texas is to build on the understandings already achieved through many years of study by numerous individuals regarding the stylistic, technological, and functional character of Caddo ceramics. This compilation is a distillation of 50+ years of the analysis and study of Caddo ceramics—particularly the quantification of the methods of decorations present on sherds from different assemblages—and a compilation that is useful for both present and future detailed studies of the sherds from ceramic vessel made by perhaps 40 or more generations of skilled Caddo potters

Ceramic Sherd Assemblages from the Hawkins Bluff (41CS2), Snipes (41CS8), and 41CS44 Sites on the lower Sulphur River at Lake Wright Patman, Cass County, Texas

Many documented sites on the lower Sulphur River in the East Texas Pineywoods were occupied by Caddo peoples, and there are a number of such sites at Lake Wright Patman, including better known sites such as Knight’s Bluff (41CS14) and Sherwin (41CS26). These sites appear to have been small villages with family cemeteries, occupied between ca. A.D. 1200-1400. In this article, I discuss the ceramic sherd assemblages from three less well-known Middle Caddo period occupations at other sites at Lake Wright Patman

Late Caddo Titus Phase Ceramics from the McKay Site (41TT730), Titus County, Texas

The McKay site (41TT730) is a multi-component site on an upland landform about 100 m east of Hart Creek, a southward-flowing tributary of Big Cypress Creek. During house construction in 1990, archaeological deposits covering about 5 acres of the landform were exposed, and these deposits include occupations that date from as early as the Paleoindian and Archaic periods to as late as Early to Late Caddo period times (ca. A.D. 900-1680). The principal ancestral Caddo component at the McKay site belongs to the Late Caddo period Titus phase, dating generally from ca. A.D. 1430-1680. This component included both habitation deposits as well as burial features in the area of house pad construction; the habitation area is at least 50 m northwest of the cemetery. At least 17 burials were excavated there by local workers after the cemetery had been exposed by land leveling, and these burials included ceramic vessels as funerary offerings, along with Talco arrow points, two ground stone celts, and a ceramic elbow pipe. The workers removed an unknown number of exposed and complete vessels, although portions of a few of these vessels were documented. Broken vessels were scattered and mixed into the fill of the house pad

Book Reviews: The Hasinais: Southern Caddoans As Seen by the Earliest Europeans

The writing and eventual publication of The Hasinais by Herbert Eugene Bolton, the founder of Spanish borderlands studies, has had a long and storied journey that is well-laid out in an introduction by Russell Magnaghi, the editor of the original 1987 hardback and 2002 paperback editions of the book. Bolton became interested in the Hasinai Caddo peoples of East Texas shortly after he arrived at The University of Texas at Austin in 1901, as he became aware “that American history had always involved the Indians and that, as he began to study southwestern history, he also had to study the ethnology of the region. Through various twists and turns, he had the present book-length manuscript virtually completely written and ready for submittal to the Smithsonian Institution in 1907. Unfortunately, the manuscript was then put aside by Bolton as he moved on to other borderlands historical work on the West Coast and California and he never completed it. Parts of it were used by William J. Griffith, one of Bolton’s students, in his 1942 dissertation “The Spanish Occupation of the Hasinai Country, 1690-1737,” and then in a later monograph on the Hasinai, but it was Russell Magnaghi who took up the task of editing the book manuscript in 1971

Caddo Vessels from the W. O. Ziegler Farm (41WD30) and Claude Burkett (41WD30) Sites in the Upper Sabine River Basin in Wood County, Texas

Caddo ceramic vessels were collected at the W. O. Ziegler Farm (41WD30) and Claude Burkett (41WD31) sites in 1930 during archaeological investigations in Wood County by The University of Texas. The one vessel from the W. O. Ziegler Farm site, located in the Lake Fork Creek drainage in the upper Sabine River basin, was found in 1918 at a depth of ca. 1.2 m by the landowner while digging a storm cellar. University of Texas archaeologists purchased the vessel in August 1930. The Claude Burkett site is in the Big Sandy Creek basin in the upper Sabine River basin. The landowner found two ceramic vessels after a heavy rain had eroded them from the site. University of Texas archaeologists also purchased these vessels in August 1930. Wilson and Jackson excavated a few test trenches at the site at that time, but did not recover any more vessels. They did note that ceramic sherds were present in small amounts between ca. 15-30 cm bs in the test trenches