scholarly journals Analysis of Ceramic Sherds from the Mid-18th Century Gilbert Site on Lake Fork Creek, Rains County, Texas

Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

The Gilbert site (41RA13) is an important mid-18th century American Indian site on an alluvial terrace along Lake Fork Creek, adjacent to the upper part of Lake Fork Reservoir in Rains County, Texas. The site was first investigated in 1962 by the Dallas Archeological Society, and based on the findings from that work, the Texas Archeological Society (TAS) had a field school at the site in June and July 1962. There are several notable features of the Gilbert site. First, it contains 21 midden mounds about 6-9 m in diameter and ca. 1 m in height spread out over ca. 50 aces of the alluvial terrace landform. The middens do not represent habitation features, as the “only occupational features discovered besides the middens were two pits that were evidently used for storing grain or other products. No house floors, post-mold patterns, burials, hearths, or other such structural remains were found." Further investigation by Blaine identified other midden features (discussed further below, and the source of the ceramic sherds discussed in this article) and a well-preserved bell-shaped storage pit in Feature 20. The newly-discovered midden features were not mounded or had a clay cap, and neither contained any evidence of structural remains or features. Structural features are considered more likely to be found in inter-midden areas than in the middens themselves. A second notable feature of the Gilbert site is the abundance of mid-18th century European trade goods in the archeological deposits, much of it likely obtained from French traders. These goods include metal tools (knives, axes, wedges, hatchets, hoes, scrapers, awls, chisels, scissors, arrow points, and a Spanish sword hilt), gun parts, ornaments (especially glass trade beads), brass kettles, horse trappings, fl at and bottle glass, and chipped glass pieces. Third, there was a substantial aboriginal ceramic sherd assemblage from the Gilbert site. The analysis of the sherds suggested that they are from vessels “too stylistically and technologically diverse to represent only one locally-produced ceramic complex." Furthermore, “the majority, and perhaps even all, of the decorated ceramics [at the site] are derived ultimately from the Caddoan [sic], particularly Fulton Aspect [Late Caddo period], tradition. Many close parallels exist in the modes and styles of decoration, paste characteristics, and vessel forms." And lastly, the various results of the investigations suggested that the site was a village occupied by southern Wichita groups, possibly the Tawakoni, Kichai, or Yscani Indians. This conclusion is far from uniformly accepted, a point I will return to in the final section of this article. In the remainder of this article, I discuss the analysis of a small collection of previously unstudied ceramic sherds from two midden features (F-B3 and F-B4) excavated by Jay and Jerrylee Blaine from the Gilbert site. The focus of the analysis is to characterize the principal stylistic and technological characteristics of the ceramic sherd assemblages from these two middens, compare this assemblage in those aspects with the larger assemblage from numerous middens studied by Story, and then offer my own interpretation of the cultural affiliations of the Gilbert site occupants based on the ceramic sherd assemblage data.

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.


2021 ◽  
pp. 30-54
Author(s):  
Gerry Simpson

If, to adapt a well-known international legal aphorism, international law is what international lawyers are, what, then, is an international lawyer? This chapter stages an answer to this question in three acts. In the first, it considers the absence of ‘life’ in the writing of international law and especially the way in which most international lawyers position themselves as a ‘person from nowhere’. In the second act, it documents and re-describes a recent move towards biography or micro-history or ‘life’ in the field of international law. In the final section, it describes four sentimental vices found in international legal work and reads these vices alongside the sentimentality of the late 18th-century ‘sentimental’ English novel before suggesting that there is a sentimental life available to international lawyers, through which they might weave a path between teariness (with the attendant risks of cheap sentimentality) and a too-cool dispassion (that is in danger of lapsing into an alienated technocracy).


2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Franklin

AbstractOn 16 March 1714 Peter I issued a decree on the printing of decrees. Previously all decrees (ukazy), and indeed almost all legislative texts apart from the 1649 law code (Ulozhenie) of Aleksei Mikhailovich, had been issued in manuscript and disseminated through hand-written copies and oral proclamation. Peter's decree on the use of print was a landmark in the administrative uses of printing in Russia. It was intended as such by Peter, and perceived as such by his successors. The continued success of this initiative is contrasted with the repeated failure of other projects for the systematic use of printing in legislation: the attempts to produce a new systematic code, and to publish regular chronological compilations of laws. This article considers the context, implications, and consequences of Peter's innovative ruling. The main questions under consideration are: why had printing not been used for these purposes earlier? what specific functions was the technology called upon to fulfil? and what were its relations with other technologies? Particular attention is paid to the perceived and actual roles of printing as an aid to (i) distribution, (ii) standardization, and (iii) the emblematic projection of authority. In each case, printing is considered not in isolation, but in its relations with the uses of manuscript and speech. A final section considers some ways in which Peter's instruction was followed or adapted by his 18th-century successors.


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

The Cherokee Lake site (41RK132), also called the Tiawichi Creek Burial site, was discovered by Buddy Calvin Jones in 1956, on a terrace area along Tiawichi Creek at its confluence with Mill Creek, inundated by the construction of Lake Cherokee in 1947, that had been graded for the construction of fish hatcheries there. Tiawichi Creek is a tributary stream in the mid–Sabine River basin. Jones identified a single burial and a large storage pit in Area A at the southern end of the terrace, where there was a shallow (0–30 cm bs) midden deposit. The burial in Area A is an Historic Nadaco Caddo grave that probably dates to the early 18th century based on the recovery of 15 blue glass beads. This strand of beads was placed near the legs of the deceased individual. The Caddo person had been placed in an extended supine position in a pit that was 1.83 m long and 0.76 cm in width, with the head facing towards the west. The estimated depth of the grave was 0.76 m, and its fill was a dark charcoal–stained midden. In addition to the strand of glass beads, three ceramic vessels had been placed as funerary offerings in the grave along with a Fresno arrow point by the upper left leg. One Simms Engraved vessel was on the left side of the body, near the foot of the grave, while a second Simms Engraved vessel had been placed by the individual’s right foot, along with a Maydelle Incised jar. A plain clay elbow pipe had been placed inside the jar. A storage pit excavated by Jones in Area A at the Cherokee Lake site appears to have been primarily associated with a pre–A.D. 1200 Caddo occupation, based on the recovery of Hickory Engraved and Dunkin Incised pottery sherds, long–stemmed Red River clay pipe sherds, and Catahoula, Alba, and Bonham arrow points. This occupation probably created the midden deposits found in Area A. In this article, I discuss ceramic sherds collected by Jones from Area A at the Cherokee Lake site. Some of the sherds were surface collected in March 1956 from the midden deposits, but it is not clear if this ceramic sherd assemblage is part of the sample of 300 sherds discussed by Jones from an Area A surface collection. The present ceramic sherd assemblage is curated at the Gregg County Historical Museum (GCHM).


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. Buddy Calvin Jones excavated a disturbed historic burial at the site in 1955, and also occasionally collected glass beads from the surface of the site. The funerary offerings placed with this disturbed burial were not clearly enumerated by Jones, as his description of artifacts from the site included artifacts he examined in several other collections. He did note 275 sherds from the surface of the site and 12 whole or restored ceramic vessels from an unknown number of burials. Most of these sherds were recorded by Jones as being grog– (52 percent) or bone–tempered (43 percent), but 4 percent were tempered with shell. Perttula and Nelson recently documented 11 vessels from the Millsey Williamson site in the collections of the Gregg County Historical Museum (GCHM). These vessels include a Emory Punctated–Incised (shell– tempered) collared jar; a Maydelle Incised jar; a Bullard Brushed jar; a jar with brushing only on the body; a Ripley Engraved, var. unspecified carinated bowl; Simms Incised carinated bowl; two unidentified engraved carinated bowls with a continuous stepped rectilinear scroll design; a carinated bowl with a sprocket rim with a continuous negative scroll design; a carinated bowl with diagonal opposed and cross–hatched engraved lines on the rim; and a plain olla. The ceramic vessels are of diverse manufacture, form, and decorative methods. Most are carinated bowls and jars tempered with grog and bone, and fired in a reducing environment, and the former are decorated with engraved lines, while the latter are decorated incised, punctated, or brushed utility wares. On their own stylistic merits, none of these vessels in the GCHM collections is that of a recognizable Historic Caddo type, such as Natchitoches Engraved, Simms Engraved, var. Darco, or Keno Trailed, and in fact, most of these vessels cannot be identified as examples of specific types. The vessels that can be typed include Emory Punctated–Incised, Maydelle Incised, and Bullard Brushed jars and a Ripley Engraved, var. unspecified carinated bowl; one vessel has been dubbed Simms Incised because it is of a form and decorative style that matches Simms Engraved, except the motif is executed with incised lines. Also recovered from the site were clay and limonite pipes, ochre and vermillion, animal teeth, glass beads, metal gun parts, gun flints, iron knives, iron arrow points, and awls in the Millsey Williamson collection. There were also a variety of brass objects: a brass tinkler, coils, hawk bells, and unworked pieces of sheet brass.


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

The Davis-McPeek site (41UR4/99) is an Early Caddo (ca. A.D. 900-1200) mound and associated village on an alluvial terrace along Little Cypress Creek, in western Upshur County in East Texas. The site, with one known mound, has been known since the early 1930s, and in the early 1960s Buddy Jones conducted archaeological investigations in the mound. A small collection of ancestral Caddo artifacts from that work are curated at the Gregg County Historical Museum (GCHM, Longview, Texas), and this article provides an analysis of this collection.


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula ◽  
Robert Z. Selden

European glass beads are one of the most common artifact categories found on historic Caddo sites in the middle reaches of the Sabine River basin in East Texas on what Jones had dubbed Kinsloe focus sites. Several thousands beads were found by Jones in his investigation of burial features at these sites, along with other European trade goods and Caddo ceramic vessels, pipes, and chipped stone tools. In Jones’ description of the beads from the Kinsloe focus sites, he relied on the analytical and chronological interpretations of John Witthoft, then of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, although he did seek the advice of R. K. Harris, a notable glass beads expert who had worked on numerous historic Caddo and Wichita sites in eastern and northern Texas. Witthoft’s interpretations of the age of the beads from the sites tended to suggest that the Kinsloe focus sites dated to the early 17th century—when beads of such types tended to date in aboriginal sites in the Northeast U.S.—while Harris suggested that the glass beads on the Kinsloe focus sites dated from no earlier than the early 18th century, and likely dated in several cases after ca. A.D. 1750. Given the likely late 17th to late 18th century ages of the engraved ceramic vessels found on the Kinsloe focus sites, based in large measure on their occurrence on a wide range of Historic Caddo sites, Harris’ temporal interpretations of the glass bead assemblages are consistent with these ceramic temporal ranges, and thus the Kinsloe focus sites are seen as indicative of Caddo settlements postdating the beginning of intensive contact between Europeans and Caddo peoples that began after A.D. 1685.


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

There is a collection of plain and decorated ceramic sherds in the Gregg County Historical Museum from a feature, described as either a fire pit or a hearth, excavated by Buddy Calvin Jones in March 1956 at the Cherokee Lake site (41RK132) on Toawichi Creek in northern Rusk County, Texas. This assemblage is discussed in this article. The Cherokee Lake site is best known for its early 18th century Nadaco Caddo component, but it also has a Middle Caddo period (ca. A.D. 1200–1400) component. In Jones’ discussion of work he conducted at the Cherokee Lake site, he mentions the excavation of an Historic Caddo burial as well as a large “refuse pit” of prehistoric age, both in Area A of the site. The excavation of a fire pit or hearth in any area at the site is not mentioned by Jones, but it seems likely that the “fire pit/hearth” may be the same feature as the aforementioned refuse pit. In any case, this “fire pit/hearth” feature at the Cherokee Lake site contained a considerable number of plain and decorated ceramic sherds, as did the “refuse pit.” According to Jones, the refuse pit had “Hickory Engraved, Dunkin Incised, variant types, unidentified types of punctated and incised wares,” as well as a small Bullard Brushed jar, a fragment of a second Bullard Brushed jar, both from the upper part of the pit, and fragments of a plain bowl from the floor of the pit.


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

This article reports on the archaeological findings from a Historic Caddo site (41AN184)1 in the upper Neches River basin in Anderson County, in East Texas. The site was found in about 1960 by Ron Green (of Rockdale, Texas) when he was a teenager. In 2007, he donated the collection of artifacts to the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, noting that “[n]othing can undo what has been done, but I know that the Caddo Nation will ensure these artifacts are given the proper respect and honor they would get no where else”. The artifacts donated by Mr. Green are from a late 17th to early 18th century Caddo site, and includes European trade goods (glass beads) as well as Caddo manufactured objects (including ceramic vessels and arrow points), which are rarely found on Caddo sites in the upper Neches River basin.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document