scholarly journals Coles Creek Culture and the Trans-Mississippi South

1991 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank F. Schambach
Keyword(s):  
Full Scale ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Red River ◽  
Mississippi Valley ◽  
Lower Mississippi Valley ◽  
Red River Valley ◽  
Coles Creek ◽  
Michael Hoffman ◽  
Major Occupation ◽  
Fourche Maline

Certain Lower Mississippi Valley (LMV) traits, mostly Coles Creek ceramic traits, but also traits such as temple mounds and certain mortuary patterns, appear at Late Fourche Maline and Early Caddo sites in the Trans-Mississippi South, particularly at sites in the Red River Valley in northwest Louisiana and southwest Arkansas. Explaining how these traits got there and understanding their role in the development of Caddo culture is one of the basic problems in the archaeology of this area. The conventional explanation has long been that they represent a full scale intrusion of Coles Creek culture into the Trans-Mississippi South. Thus Michael Hoffman has created a Crenshaw phase of Coles Creek culture in the Great Bend region of the Red River Valley in southwest Arkansas, and Clarence H. Webb attributed the initial major occupation at the Mounds Plantation site in northwest Louisiana to "Coles Creek peoples" who "laid out the plaza, possibly constructed Mound 2 as a quadrilateral temple substructure, and--at the opposite end of the plaza--established a burial area where Mound 5 sits."

scholarly journals The Development of the Burial Mound Tradition in the Caddo Area

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank F. Schambach
Keyword(s):  
Early Stage ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Red River ◽  
Burial Mound ◽  
High Status ◽  
Mississippi Valley ◽  
Social Stratum ◽  
Red River Valley ◽  
Coles Creek ◽  
Fourche Maline

This is a significantly revised version of a paper I presented at the 1994 East Texas Archeological Conference in Tyler, Texas. The gist of that paper was that the origins of the burial mound tradition in the Caddo area can be traced, not to the Coles Creek culture in the Lower Mississippi Valley as the conventional wisdom would have it, but to an independent Fourche Maline mound building tradition that developed in and around the Red River Valley beginning about 100 B.C.2 I still think that there was an independent Fourche Maline mound building tradition and I still think that, as I tried to show in my conference presentation, the earliest mounds at the earliest Caddo ceremonial center we know of, Mounds D and C at the Crenshaw site, were constructed in that tradition. As I will show in this paper, it is clear that the Crenshaw mounds were not "Coles Creek" mounds. But in the three years since my conference presentation, I have changed my interpretation of the slightly later, late Fourche Maline period, full-fleshed, group burials that were also found in Mound Cat Crenshaw. These are the earliest graves found so far at any Caddo site that seem to be clearly in the tradition of the distinctive, high status "shaft tomb" burials of early Caddo culture in the Red River Valley. In my original presentation I argued that these graves, and hence the early Caddo mound burial tradition, could be derived from the old Fourche Maline burial mound tradition. But since then I have come to consider that argument unconvincing and untenable. The new argument I offer here is that the stimulus for the early Caddo mound burial pattern did indeed come from outside the Caddo Area, as many archeologists have suggested, but it was not from Coles Creek culture as has commonly been supposed. I now think that these graves indicate the point in time when powerful influences from the "Emergent Mississippian" cultures to the northeast of the Caddo Area, perhaps from Cahokia itself, were beginning to transform the centuries-old Fourche Maline burial mound tradition into the essentially Mississippian early Caddo burial mound tradition. This transition must have entailed not just changes in the Fourche Maline burial mound tradition but also basic changes in the structure and importance of the elite stratum, if such there was, in Fourche Maline society itself. Thus, these graves would reflect an early stage in the transformation, under Emergent Mississippian influence, of the evidently still quite weakly developed elite social stratum in late Fourche Maline society into the well defined elite stratum that seems to have dominated early Caddo society; i.e., the social elite responsible for the deep, richly accoutered shaft tombs that were emplaced in mounds at all the important early Caddo ceremonial centers. So in this paper I will first attempt to isolate and describe the old Fourche Maline burial mound tradition. Then I will try to show that the earliest mounds at Crenshaw were built in that tradition. Finally, I will try to show how that tradition was interrupted and significantly altered around A.D. 800, and I will argue that the Emergent Mississippians were behind this transition.

scholarly journals The Harling Site (41FN1): An Ancestral Caddo Mound Site on the Red River in Fannin County, Texas

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula
Keyword(s):  
River Valley ◽  
Red River ◽  
East Texas ◽  
Alluvial Terrace ◽  
The West ◽  
University Of Texas ◽  
Red River Valley ◽  
Short Summary ◽  
Coles Creek ◽  
Length Width

The Harling site (41FN1), also earlier known as the Morgan Place, is a little-known ancestral Caddo mound site located on the first alluvial terrace of the Red River in the northeastern corner of Fannin County in East Texas. The only professional archaeological investigations at the Harling site took place in November-December 1960 by a University of Texas crew led by Dr. E. Mott Davis, in advance of proposed mound leveling by the landowner. Other than short summary articles by Davis, the results of the excavations and analyses of the recovered artifacts from the Harling site have not been previously published. The mound at the site was leveled in 1963 by the landowner, Mr. R. A. Harling. The single mound at the site was approximately 70 x 52 x 2.1 m in length, width, and height. There was a borrow pit area at the southern end of the mound. The mound at the Harling site appears to be the westernmost known of the more than 100 Caddo mounds that have been reported in East Texas. According to Davis (1996:463), the site is on the western frontier of Caddo communities in the Red River valley, and Caddo settlements are found at most only a few miles to the west of the site along the river, but are common to the east of the Harling mound. Based on the 1960 excavations of the mound and an examination at that time of the surrounding alluvial landforms—which were plowed—there was no substantial Caddo settlement at the Harling site, or any associated settlement cluster within ca. 2.5 km of the mound, although there were scattered artifacts from the surface dispersed both east and west of the mound. When R. L. Stephenson, E. O. Miller, and Lester Wilson visited the Harling site in August 1950, however, they commented that artifacts were abundant in the plowed fields around the mound. In particular they noted that the ceramic sherds were mostly plain and grog-tempered, and some of the sherds had a red slip (i.e., Sanders Plain). R. King Harris also collected artifacts from the site, primarily from an area to the west of the mound and near the edge of the alluvial terrace . He collected from this area W Gary dart points, Alba arrow points, plain sherds, and one Coles Creek Incised rim with an incised lip line. In the fields east of the mound, Harris collected a number of small triangular arrow points, suggesting that this area was where the latest Caddo occupation had taken place.

scholarly journals A Probable Spiroan Entrepot in the Red River Valley in Northeast Texas

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Schambach
Keyword(s):  
River Valley ◽  
Red River ◽  
Mississippi Valley ◽  
Eastern Woodlands ◽  
Prestige Goods ◽  
Red River Valley ◽  
Type Site ◽  
Shell Beads ◽  
Conch Shell

In 1931, twenty-one graves at an obscure site on the edge of the Eastern Woodlands yielded an astonishing concentration of Mississippian prestige goods: 4 conch shell cups 21 shell gorgets 5,500 shell beads ca. 200 Olivella beads 26 freshwater pearl beads 2 copper-stained siltstone earspools 2 polished sandstone elbow pipes l negative-painted bottle 2 Mississippi Valley-style "bean pots" In 1933, larger concentrations of similar goods were found at Spiro. But Sanders was 150 mountainous miles from Spiro (Figure l) and the domestic assemblages at both sites were unknown, so Sanders was not considered a Spiroan site. In 1946, Krieger made it the type site of a Sanders "focus" which he conceptualized as "a frontier [Caddo] culture facing the open Plains."

scholarly journals Spiroan Entrepots at and Beyond the Western Border of the Tans-Mississippi South

1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Schambach
Keyword(s):  
Red River ◽  
Mississippi Valley ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
The West ◽  
Standard Interpretation ◽  
Lower Mississippi Valley ◽  
Red River Valley ◽  
Western Border ◽  
Archeological Evidence

Although this paper is primarily a reinterpretation of the Sanders site in the Red River Valley in northeastern Texas, that reinterpretation will make no sense unless I first outline, very quickly, the new paradigm for the archeology of the Arkansas Valley in eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas upon which it is based. For the last five years, as I am sure most of you know, I have been challenging the standard interpretation of the archeology of the Arkansas Valley in eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas--the Northern Caddoan Area paradigm. I have done this on the grounds that there is no documentary evidence and no archeological evidence for a Caddoan connection of any sort other than trade. In my view the basic biological and cultural ties of this tradition, which I call the Arkansas Valley tradition, were, as Bell has speculated, to the east with peoples of the Central and Lower Mississippi Valley, not to the south with the Caddoan area or to the west with the Wichita. I suspect, as I have said before, that this tradition was a part,at least, of the long lost ancestral Tunican tradition.

scholarly journals Comparing Caddo and Coles Creek Pottery Using Petrographic Analysis

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffery S. Girard ◽  
Leslie G. Cecil
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Studies ◽  
Red River ◽  
Petrographic Analysis ◽  
Mississippi Valley ◽  
Initial Attempt ◽  
Lower Mississippi Valley ◽  
Coles Creek

Pottery classified as “Coles Creek Incised” is common both to the earliest Caddo sites along the Red River and to contemporary sites in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Although it often is suggested that Coles Creek pottery from the two regions can be distinguished by differences in paste, no detailed comparative studies have been carried out. An initial attempt to identify variation through the use of petrographic analysis was carried out by comparing 50 samples drawn from sites in northwest and central Louisiana. Although no sharp dichotomy was noted between the regions, the study identified distinctions that support the notion that most Coles Creek pottery was made locally and different technological traditions may be represented.

scholarly journals Impact of Controlled Drainage and Subirrigation on Water Quality in the Red River Valley

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 308
Author(s):  
Kristen Almen ◽  
Xinhua Jia ◽  
Thomas DeSutter ◽  
Thomas Scherer ◽  
Minglian Lin
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Surface Water ◽  
Surface Water Quality ◽  
Drainage Water ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Red River ◽  
Nutrient Loss ◽  
Controlled Drainage ◽  
Red River Valley ◽  
The Impact

The potential impact of controlled drainage (CD), which limits drainage outflow, and subirrigation (SI), which provides supplemental water through drain tile, on surface water quality are not well known in the Red River Valley (RRV). In this study, water samples were collected and analyzed for chemical concentrations from a tile-drained field that also has controlled drainage and subirrigation modes in the RRV of southeastern North Dakota from 2012–2018. A decreasing trend in overall nutrient load loss was observed because of reduced drainage outflow, though some chemical concentrations were found to be above the recommended surface water quality standards in this region. For example, sulfate was recommended to be below 750 mg/L but was reported at a mean value of 1971 mg/L during spring free drainage. The chemical composition of the subirrigation water was shown to have an impact on drainage water and the soil, specifically on salinity-related parameters, and the impact varied between years. This variation largely depended on the amount of subirrigation applied, soil moisture, and soil properties. Overall, the results of this study show the benefits of controlled drainage on nutrient loss reduction from agricultural fields.

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