Deconstructing the Sanders Focus and the Sanders Phase : A Reply to Perttula Regarding the Taxonomy and Significance of the So-called Sanders Focus, or Sanders Phase, Pottery of Northeast Texas and Southeast Oklahoma

Abstract

Perttula is correct in pointing out that there are numerical errors in a recently published table of mine. A revised version is presented here as Table 1. Although several of these errors are numerically large and might have caused problems had they gone uncorrected, Perttula is not correct in suggesting that they are serious in the sense that they have affected the conclusions I reached based on the table, the insinuation being that they weaken my Sanders entrepot hypothesis. They do not. That hypothesis is part of the reinterpretation of the archeology and bioanthropology of the Arkansas Valley and the Red River Valley which I have been developing for more than eight years. It could hardly be weakened by errors in this table which is simply a compilation of the pottery of the five so-called Sanders focus/phase types reported from the list of sites with probable Sanders phase components recently proffered by Bruseth, Wilson, and Perttula