scholarly journals Caddo Ceramic Sherds from Leon River Valley Sites in Coryell County, Texas

Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

This article is concerned with the consideration of “Caddo connections” as expressed in the character of the ceramic assemblages from three sites in the Leon River valley in Central Texas that have been considered to have Caddo pottery and were occupied by Prairie Caddo peoples; these ceramic assemblages are in the collections of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin (TARL). Of particular importance are the stylistic (i.e., decorative methods and decorative elements) and technological (i.e., choice of temper inclusions) attributes of the sherds from the sites that are from plain ware, utility ware, and fine ware vessels.

Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

The Bert W. Davis site in the South Sulphur River valley in East Texas was investigated by archaeologists from the University of Texas (UT) in 1919 and 1934, because an aboriginal cemetery had been exposed by plowing and later looting. The UT work consisted of a reconnaissance by J. E. Pearce in September 1919 and trenching by A. T. Jackson and crew in July 1934. A small assemblage of artifacts were recovered by UT during this work, but the collection (now at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at UT) had never been fully studied or the results of the work published. This was unfortunate because it appears that the Bert W. Davis site is virtually a single component Woodland period site that was occupied during the early part of the period, from ca. 100 B.C. to A.D. 300. Such sites are rare in the East Texas archaeological record. In this article, I discuss the analysis of the site and its distinctive artifact assemblage.


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

The distinctive Caddo ceramic vessels from the lower Neches–Angelina (i.e., Lake Sam Rayburn) and the lower Sabine (i.e., Toledo Bend Reservoir) river basins are not well understood, due to current cultural phase taxonomic difficulties and poorly defined ceramic assemblages. Sites in these areas were included in the Angelina focus by Jelks, which was a “broadly defined unit encompassing the entire Caddoan [sic] sequence in the Lake Sam Rayburn locality; needs reevaluation in light of larger sample of sites which are known in the area." Perttula used the term late Angelina focus to refer to sites in these localities that date after ca. A.D. 1400, but this taxonomic terminology is also not satisfactory. The vessels from the Lake Sam Rayburn Caddo sites warrant restudy, because currently it is difficult to determine what a representative assemblage of ceramic fine ware and utility ware vessels from this part of the Neches–Angelina River basin looks like, and the differing affiliations of local Caddo groups. Few of the vessels recovered from burials at Lake Sam Rayburn have been typologically identified. The rarity of Belcher Ridged sherds in the Lake Sam Rayburn sites when compared to their frequency in Toledo Bend Reservoir sites appears to indicate that the ancestral Caddo groups that once occupied these two areas had distinctly different utility ware traditions. Furthermore, stylistically–related Titus phase and Belcher phase engraved fine wares are absent in the Lake Sam Rayburn sites, much different from the Toledo Bend Reservoir ceramic assemblages, a trend which may be indicative of differing populations of Caddo peoples living in these two locales. The Lake Sam Rayburn ceramic assemblages warrant a thorough reanalysis—paired with radiocarbon dates from organics (and organic residues on sherds and vessels) in the collections—before it will be possible to establish their temporal, stylistic, and compositional character and diversity, and explore their relationship to other ancestral Caddo ceramic traditions in East Texas and Northwest Louisiana. This article summarizes the reanalysis of the Lake Sam Rayburn ceramic vessels. There are 21 vessels in the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory, The University of Texas at Austin collections from Lake Sam Rayburn archaeological investigations. This includes: 12 vessels from Walter Bell (41SB50); one vessel from Bird Point Islands (41SB71); one vessel from the Sawmill site (41SA89); six vessels from the Wylie Price site (41SA94); and one vessel from the Blount site (41SA123).


Author(s):  
Timothy Perttula ◽  
Bob Skiles

The A. C. Gibson site (41WD1) is an ancestral Caddo site located on a natural knoll at the base of an upland landform, adjacent to the floodplain of the Sabine River and Cedar Lake, an old channel of the river, in southwestern Wood County, in the Post Oak Savannah of East Texas. Two Caddo ceramic vessels are in the collections from the site held by the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin. These vessels are documented in this article.


Author(s):  
Timothy Perttula ◽  
Kevin Stingley

In the summer of 2017, 21 ancestral Caddo ceramic vessels held since 1933 by the Gila Pueblo Museum and then by the Arizona State Museum were returned to the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin (TARL). These vessels had not been properly or fully studied and documented when the University of Texas exchanged these vessels, so our purpose in documenting these vessels now is primarily concerned with determining the stylistic (i.e., decorative methods, motifs, and decorative elements) and technological (i.e., vessel form, temper, and vessel size) character of the vessels that are in the collection, and assessing their cultural relationships and stylistic associations, along with their likely age. In 1933, little was known about the cultural and temporal associations of ancestral Caddo ceramic vessels from East Texas, but that has changed considerably since that time.


Author(s):  
Timothy Perttula

In this article, I document 28 ancestral Caddo ceramic vessels from seven sites and one general collection in the whole vessel collections at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL) at The University of Texas at Austin (UT). These sites and general collection are in Anderson and Cherokee counties in East Texas (Figure 1), specifically the: Rube Beard site (41AN18, n=2), the Edward W. Ellis site (41AN36, n=1), the Ray Lookabaugh site (41AN37, n=1), the R. E. Daly site (41AN39, n=9), the Jasper Tucker/Mrs. Joe Watkins Farm site (41AN44, n=11; see also Perttula and Selden [2015]), the W. T. Todd site (41AN52, n=1), the N. B. Ruggles site (41CE40, n=2), and one vessel from the Cherokee County general collections. The methods of ceramic vessel analysis follow those specified in Perttula (2018:2-4), among other publications on Caddo ceramic vessel documentation, methods consistently employed since the 1990s in the documentation of ancestral Caddo ceramic vessels in East Texas sites.


1947 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Charles Kelley

The importance of the Clear Fork Focus as a pre-pottery archaeological complex of north-central Texas has become generally known to archaeologists through the industry of its discoverer and principal proponent, Dr. Cyrus N. Ray, of Abilene, Texas. Unfortunately, the relationship of this complex to other and comparable archaeological cultures of Texas has been largely neglected and some regrettable misinformation in regard to its chronological position has been widely disseminated. In this paper the cultural affiliations and age of the Clear Fork Focus will be discussed in terms of the evidence presented by its discoverers and from the standpoint of new data derived from large scale excavations completed by the University of Texas in the terraces of the Colorado River near Austin, Texas. Additional information obtained by the writer through study of some twelve thousand projectile points from central, south, and western Texas, and their geographic and temporal distribution also is used.


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):  
Dale Hudler ◽  
Jonathan Jarvis ◽  
Tim Griffith

The Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL) at The University of Texas at Austin conducted a partial magnetometer survey of The Archaeological Conservancy-owned portion of the A. C. Saunders site (41AN19) during the period between 6-8 December 2005. This survey was sponsored by the Texas Department of Transportation Environmental Affairs Division (TxDOT/ENV) due to a proposed expansion of the right-of-way of U.S. Highway 175 and was conducted under a research design approved by The Archeological Conservancy and TxDOT/ENV. The work was conducted under the direction of Dale Hudler (Principal Investigator) from TARL with a joint TARL/Prewitt and Associates, Inc. field crew (Jonathan Jarvis, TARL and Tim Griffith, Prewitt and Associates, Inc.).


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

The Stover Lake site (41BW8) is an ancestral Caddo cemetery and habitation site on a natural alluvial rise in the Sulphur River floodplain, about 1.6 km east of the Lake Wright Patman dam. In 1961-1962, several collectors excavated at least 19 Caddo burials at the site and also gathered a collection of sherds from habitation contexts. Notes on the burials and their funerary offerings were provided by the collectors to the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin (TARL), and 390 ceramic sherds and one stone gorget from non-burial contexts were donated to TARL by one of the collectors, Janson L. McVay.


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