scholarly journals Trends in Archaic and Woodland Period Use of the Middle Sabine River Basin Based on Dart Point Proportions

Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula ◽  
William L. Young

In this article, we use the varying proportions of a large sample of Archaic and Woodland period dart points to explore trends in settlement and occupational intensity from ca. 10,000 to 1200 years B.P. in the Pineywoods and Post Oak Savannah of East Texas. These darts were collected from sites in Gregg, Harrison, Rusk, and Smith counties, Texas, mainly on sites in the middle reaches of the Sabine River basin.

Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

The A. C. Gibson site (41WD1) is an ancestral Caddo site of probable Middle Caddo period (ca. A.D. 1200-1400) age in the Sabine River basin in the Post Oak Savannah of East Texas (Figure 1). The site is on a natural alluvial knoll in the floodplain of the Sabine River and Cottonwood Creek, just north of Cedar Lake, an old channel of the river. The site has been known since the early 1930s by collectors and site looters, early University of Texas (UT) archeologists, and then by later archaeologists from UT and Southern Methodist University, but it has heretofore not been scrutinized by Caddo archaeologists to any serious degree.


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula ◽  
Mark Walters

The Jonas Short site (41SA101) is one of a few known and investigated Woodland period mounds in the Trans–Mississippi south (i.e., East Texas, Northwest Louisiana, Southwest Arkansas, and Southeast Oklahoma). In fact, the site is one of only four identified mound sites of possible Woodland period age—and Mossy Grove cultural tradition—in the Neches–Angelina and Sabine river basins in East Texas and Northwest Louisiana: Coral Snake (16SA48), Anthony (16SA7), Jonas Short, and Westerman (41HO15). The Jonas Short site was located on an alluvial terrace of the Angelina River. It was investigated in 1956 by archaeologists from the University of Texas and the River Basin Survey prior to its inundation by the waters of Lake Sam Rayburn.


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

The GC-123 site was located and investigated by Buddy C. Jones during his years of archaeological work and surface collecting at numerous aboriginal sites in the mid-Sabine River basin in East Texas. The site is in south-central Gregg County, on Rabbit Creek (a northern-flowing tributary to the Sabine River), but only a few miles from the Sabine River valley. The site is notable for its ceramic sherd assemblage. Based on characteristics of Woodland period ceramics from the mid-Sabine River basin, including sites such as 41HS231 and 41RK562 (see Dockall and Fields 2011; Dockall et al. 2008), Hawkwind (41HS915), Folly (41RK26), Herman Ballew (41RK222), and Resch (41HS16, the GC-123 site appears to be a single component Woodland period occupation.


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

The Colony Church site (41RA31) is an ancestral Caddo mound center in the Post Oak Savannah of the upper Sabine River basin in East Texas; it is the westernmost Caddo mound site on the Sabine River. The site was recorded in the late 1960s, as part of an archaeological survey of the proposed Mineola Reservoir on the Sabine River. The reservoir was never constructed.


Author(s):  
Mark Walters ◽  
Timothy K. Perttula

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.


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

One of the prehistoric Caddo sites represented in the Buddy Calvin Jones Collections at the Gregg County Historical Museum (GCHM) is the Three Mounds Creek site in Gregg County, in East Texas. The site is GC-68 in the Jones site numbering system (68th site he discovered in Gregg County). The available information about the site in the GCHM records is sketchy at best. The site had three mounds along Spring Creek, near its confluence with the Sabine River, in the Longview area. A search of Gregg County 7.5' USGS topographic quadrangles failed to disclose a Spring Creek in the Sabine River basin, so it is likely that the Spring Creek appellation is an informal one used by Jones at the time. Jones' notes also fail to describe the mounds in any fashion, nor their relationship to each other or the landform they were built on, and no map is available that shows the location of the three mounds with respect to where he collected artifacts from the site.


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

The L. L. Winterbauer site (41WD6) is an ancestral Caddo habitation site in the Lake Fork Creek basin in the Post Oak Savannah of East Texas (Figure 1). It is situated along a small tributary stream that flows west into Lake Fork Creek, itself a tributary to the Sabine River, about 1.5 miles west of Quitman, the county seat of Wood County. The recovered artifacts from the investigations of the Winterbauer site indicate that the site was occupied during the Late Caddo period Titus phase, dated generally between ca. A.D. 1430-1680.


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

The Millsey Williamson site (41RK3) is an 18th century Nadaco Caddo settlement and cemetery situated on an alluvial terrace on the east side of Martin Creek in the Sabine River basin. Some portions of the site are now covered by the waters of Martin Creek Lake, constructed in the 1970s. The site was first investigated in the 1930s, when at least 11 historic Caddo burials were excavated in the cemetery at the western end of the landform. In 1940, Jack Hughes, then an East Texas resident, but later a prominent Texas archaeologist, gathered a small collection of sherds from the Millsey Williamson site, and the analysis of these sherds is the subject of this article.


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula ◽  
Bob D. Skiles ◽  
Julian A. Sitters

Site 41VN63 is a multiple component Late Archaic (circa [ca.] 5000-2500 years B.P.) and Woodland period (ca. 2500-1150 years B.P.) site on an upland landform in the upper Sabine River basin. The site was recorded by James Malone (1972) during the archaeological survey of then-proposed Mineola Reservoir on the Sabine River; the reservoir has not been built. Malone described the site in 1971 as being located on an upland ridge on the southeast side of Caney Creek, and covered a 20 x 50 m area. He noted and/or collected from the site surface chert, quartzite, and petrified wood lithic debris (n=28) and cores (n=11) . Malone also mentioned finding flake tools as well as plain pottery sherds at the site, but no such artifacts were mentioned in Malone’s tabulations. This collection has yet to be examined at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin. Shortly thereafter, Bob D. Skiles learned of the site and, with the permission of the landowner, conducted surface collections there on several occasions over the next two years, and recorded the site as GS-1 in his site recording system. In the late 1980s, Skiles loaned Perttula the artifacts he had collected from the site, and they were studied and documented at that time. Now, this many years later, the results of those analyses are provided in this article.


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