Book Review: Our Unprotected Heritage: Whitewashing the Destruction of our Cultural and Natural Environment

Before becoming involved in archeology, I was a commercial nurseryman for thirty years in East Texas. Finally though, I had my fill of fighting weather, unstable markets, pests and yes, government agencies. After retirement I sought what I thought would be tranquility in the field of archeology. Archeology was a topic that I had been interested in since I was a teenager and I thought it would provide the peace-of-mind I was seeking. Wrong again

41SM195A, The Browning Site

A surface collection of early 19th century historic sherds led to archeological investigations in 2002 and 2003 at the Browning site (41SM195A) in Smith County, Texas. My interest was whetted by mention in the original land abstract that the property had once been deeded to the Cherokee. In all, a total of 6.5 cubic meters was excavated, including twenty-two shovel tests and 10 1 x 1 m test units, and a fine-screen sample was taken from the midden. As a result, 1076 prehistoric and historic artifacts were recovered, along with new information about the Woodland period archeology in this part of East Texas. The initial shovel tests found, in addition to the historic component, a buried midden with evidence of Woodland period occupation. Based on the excavations, the midden covered approximately 500 m2. The 19th century historic artifacts were found in the upper sediment zone (a light brown sandy loam that was mostly gravel-free) covering the midden. The buried midden was a dark yellowish-brown gravelly loam that contained prehistoric pottery, bone, charred wood and nutshells, lithic materials, including lithic debris, flake tools, arrow and dart points, and ground stone tools. A calibrated radiocarbon date of AD 625 to 880 (2 sigma), with a calibrated intercept of AD 685, was obtained on charred nutshell from 40-50 cm bs in the midden zone. A series of Oxidizable Carbon Ratio dates from the midden indicate that the midden began to form about AD 147, with dates of AD 359-817 from the main part of the midden, indicating when the Browning site was most intensively occupied in prehistoric times

The Henry Chapman Site (41SM56)

In the mid-1950s, Sam Whiteside conducted excavations at the Henry Chapman site, his site P-5 (41SM56), on Prairie Creek in eastern Smith County, Texas, some 18 miles east of Tyler, Texas. Mr. Whiteside was an amateur archaeologist who discovered and explored numerous sites up and down Prairie Creek as well as other important sites in Smith and adjoining counties. The Chapman site was one of the first sites to be investigated by Mr. Whiteside, and the major part of the work took place there in 1957 and 1958. In August 1957, the site was visited by Edward B. Jelks and Leroy Johnson, who viewed the excavations and examined artifacts collected from there. Mr. Jelks, in notes on record at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL) at The University of Texas in Austin, Texas, on August 21, 1958, indicated after observing the artifacts from the Henry Chapman site that the ceramics indicated an Alto focus occupation. He recognized Hickory Engraved and Holly Fine Engraved wares as well as Dunkin Incised and possible Pennington Punctated-Incised sherds. He mentioned that no Crockett Curvilinear Incised or Weches Fingernail Impressed sherds were present (two common types present at the Alto focus type site, the George C. Davis site [41CE19]). E. Mott Davis also visited the site in late 1957, and in February 1959, Davis, Lathel F. Duffield, and William A. Davis collected skeletal material from the site. In a June 15, 1958, newsletter from the East Texas Archeological Society (ETAS), Mr. Whiteside described excavations at the Henry Chapman site that had revealed refuse pits, post holes, and an abundance of pottery sherds indicative of an Alto focus occupation. In the summer of 1983, Mr. Whiteside visited the University of Texas Field School at the George C. Davis site, where he loaned some of his notes and collections from the Chapman site for recording purposes (these are on file at TARL). After Mr. Whiteside’s death, his family graciously allowed me access to his notes and artifacts. Not all of the artifacts have survived, having been stored in paper bags and subjected to several moves, but thanks to Mr. Whiteside’s writing lot numbers on artifacts and listing them in a journal, a majority of them have survived, and thus are suitable for study. Although 50 years have passed since Mr. Whiteside’s work at the Henry Chapman site, it is my intent to now make that work public

Small components in k-nearest neighbour graphs

Let $G=G_{n,k}$ denote the graph formed by placing points in a square of area $n$ according to a Poisson process of density 1 and joining each point to its $k$ nearest neighbours. Balister, Bollob\'as, Sarkar and Walters proved that if $k<0.3043\log n$ then the probability that $G$ is connected tends to 0, whereas if $k>0.5139\log n$ then the probability that $G$ is connected tends to 1. We prove that, around the threshold for connectivity, all vertices near the boundary of the square are part of the (unique) giant component. This shows that arguments about the connectivity of $G$ do not need to consider `boundary' effects. We also improve the upper bound for the threshold for connectivity of $G$ to $k=0.4125\log n$.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figure

The Lake Clear (41SM243) Site and Crotalus horridus atricaudatus

I fell heir to a collection of prehistoric Caddo sherds from my late Uncle Sam Whiteside and a location on a 7.5’ topographic map labeled Lake Clear. Sam Whiteside during the period from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s was very active in the East Texas area working through the old East Texas Archeological Society headquartered in Tyler, Texas. The name Lake Clear was vaguely familiar but a check of local maps failed to reveal its location. However, an older map jolted my memory. The lake had been built on east Mill Creek west of Winona, Texas, as a club lake. For some reason, the project was abandoned after a short period of time and the lake was drained and turned into pasture. Although I have never even visited the site location, but did record it in 2000, I felt that writing this article was justified in order to (1) describe this interesting collection of Caddo sherds and (2) compare one aspect of the sherds—the engraved rattlesnake motif found on several Lake Clear sherds—to other known examples in the Caddo archeological area. This was not a new idea but had been hashed around in prior years by Tim Perttula, Tom Middlebrook, and the late Jim Corbin, among others. Tim Perttula was especially helpful in sharing his notes. Perhaps the most important part of research is knowing when to stop. I realize that other examples of the rattlesnake motif in Caddo pottery will appear in the future, hopefully spurred on by this article, and if someone else would like to take up the subject where I have left off, I would be pleased

The Bryan Hardy Site (41SM55), Smith County, Texas

The authors put on record archeological data obtained by Mr. Walters\u27 late uncle Sam Whiteside from the Bryan Hardy site (41SM55) in Smith County, Texas. Mr. Whiteside was an active avocational archeologist in East Texas during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and he recorded numerous prehistoric sites on Prairie Creek and Ray Creek in Smith County, and the Jamestown (41SM54) and Boxed Springs (41UR30) mound sites on the Sabine River. An abrupt illness in mid-life prevented him from publishing his findings, and we hope that the publication of his investigations at the Bryan Hardy site will allow his work to be available to the interested public

The Wolf Site (41SM195), Smith County, Texas

The Wolf site (41SM195) is a prehistoric Caddo site located in eastern Smith County, Texas, in the John Wolf land survey, approximately 12 miles east of Tyler, Texas. This article discusses recent excavations I conducted at the site, and summarizes the archeological findings, including features, the age of the archeological deposits, the various lithic and ceramic artifacts that were recovered, and offers speculations about why this part of Smith County was apparently abandoned by the Caddo peoples in the 15th century. The Wolf site is an important part of my family\u27s history. The abstract for the property begins with a treaty with Mexico on November 8th, 1822, with the Texas Cherokee. My great-great-grandfather, I. N. Browning, purchased the property on November 18, 1867, and this was part of the 4133 acres he owned in eastern Smith County. My grandfather was born on the property, and in 1950, the property again returned to the family\u27s holdings when my father, J. A. Walters, purchased 150 acres of the original tract

41SM53 (P-4) on Prairie Creek, Smith County, Texas

In February 1957, Sam Whiteside of Smith County, Texas, excavated a burial at 41SM53. This site was designated P-4 in Mr. Whiteside’s notes and it was one of several Caddo sites along Prairie Creek in the upper Sabine River basin that he investigated to varying degrees in the 1950s and 1960s. As an a vocational archeologist Mr. Whiteside made many important contributions to East Texas archeology. Dr. Dee Ann Story, of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin, who corresponded with Mr. Whiteside, later obtained the trinomial 41SM53 for the site

Woodland and Caddo Period Sites at Toledo Bend Reservoir, Northwest Louisiana and East Texas

Toledo Bend Reservoir is one of the largest artificial lakes in the United States and the largest reservoir in the South. The lake is approximately 65 miles long and contains over 1200 miles of shoreline in both Louisiana and Texas. Construction began in 1964 with completion of the power plant, with the subsequent filling of the lake in 1969. Archaeological investigations at Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Sabine River and tributaries in both Louisiana and Texas took place primarily took during the 1960s, with survey and excavations, sometimes of a very limited nature by the University of Texas (UT) and Southern Methodist University (SMU). Girard has continued archaeological investigations along the Louisiana side of the reservoir, however, focusing particularly on work at the James Pace site. In this article we review the nature of the material culture assemblage of the Woodland and Caddo sites at Toledo Bend Reservoir based on the collections at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin (TARL). This consists of ceramic and/or lithic artifacts from 76 different sites in Louisiana and Texas. We have also examined ceramic vessels from Woodland and Caddo burial features at several Toledo Bend Reservoir sites. Our purpose in re-examining the TARL collections from the Toledo Bend Reservoir is to better understand and characterize the material culture assemblages (primarily decorated ceramic sherds) from sites that date between ca. 2500 years B.P. and the late 17th-early 18th century A.D., particularly in light of questions concerning the cultural affiliation and cultural taxonomic relationships of the ancestral Caddo sites in this part of East Texas and western Louisiana

Caddo Ceramic Vessels from the Womack Site (41LR1), Lamar County, Texas

The Womack site (41LR1) is an ancestral Caddo settlement situated on an alluvial terrace in a horseshoe bend of the Red River in north central Lamar County in East Texas. Harris completed the analysis and study of their 1938-mid-1960s investigations at the site, but the findings from the earlier archaeological investigations conducted at the site by the University of Texas (UT) in 1931 have only been recently published