scholarly journals The Woodland Period Component at the Wolfshead Site (41SA117), San Augustine County, Texas

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

The Wolfshead site (41SA117) was excavated by the Texas Archeological Salvage Project at The University of Texas in the fall and winter of 1960 prior to the inundation of the site by the waters of Lake Sam Rayburn in the Angelina River basin in East Texas. The site was located on a sandy terrace and covered ca. 1 acre in size; the sandy deposits were a maximum of ca. 60 cm in thickness below an historic plow zone. The excavations were in the northern and southern parts of the site, and indicated that the Wolfshead site had an extensive Late Paleoindian–Early Archaic San Patrice culture occupation dating ca. 10,500–9800 years B.P., as well as a Woodland period (ca. 2500–1150 years B.P.) occupation in both site areas. The latter occupation is a component of the inland and deep East Texas Mossy Grove culture defined by Story. This component is recognized by the occurrence of sandy paste Goose Creek Plain ceramic vessel sherds, contracting stem dart points (in the earlier part of the Woodland period), and various stemmed arrow points (after ca. A.D. 700 in the Woodland period).

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

The Wolfshead site (41SA117) was excavated by the Texas Archeological Salvage Project at The University of Texas in 1960 prior to the inundation of the site by the waters of Lake Sam Rayburn in the Angelina River basin in East Texas. The site was located on a sandy terrace and covered ca. 1 acre in size; the sandy deposits were a maximum of ca. 60 cm in thickness below an historic plow zone. The excavations in the northern and southern parts of the site indicated that the Wolfshead site had an extensive Late Paleoindian–Early Archaic San Patrice culture occupation estimated to date between ca. 10,500–9800 years B.P. based on the radiocarbon dating of archaeological deposits with San Patrice points in sites in the Woodland and Southern Plains in south central North America. San Patrice components cluster “in the eastern half of Texas, where prairies and woodlands would have predominated." The component at the Wolfshead site is marked by a number of distinctive dart points, as discussed in the next section, as well as scraping tools, and Albany scrapers. The Albany scrapers were made on local petrified wood, while the unifacial side and end scrapers were manufactured on both petrified wood and pebble cherts.


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

The W. T. Robinson Farm site (41AN4) is one of a number of ancestral Caddo sites known in the Caddo Creek valley in the upper Neches River basin in East Texas. The site, about 2.5 miles northwest of Frankston, Texas, was investigated by archaeologists from the University of Texas (UT) in 1931 in an area where locals had reportedly excavated 15 Caddo vessels some 20 years earlier. The UT investigations found no Caddo burials or vessels, and recovered only a small assemblage of ceramic vessel sherds.


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 Brooks-Lindsey site is a probable post-A.D. 1650 Caddo settlement in the Neches River basin in the East Texas Pineywoods. The site was brought to professional archaeological attention in 1986, when collectors who were working the site contacted archaeologists at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin (TARL), and allowed them to examine the ceramic vessel sherd collection they had assembled at that time from surface collections and various excavations.


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

The Molly Cameron site is an ancestral Caddo habitation site with burial features in the Sulphur River basin in East Texas, specifically on Aiken Creek, a southward-flowing tributary, about one mile east of the dam at Lake Wright Patman. The site was first exposed in 1928, when plowing of the land owned by W. K. Cameron exposed several ceramic vessels and human remains. One of the vessels was purchased by The University of Texas at Austin in August 1932; that vessel is documented below.


Author(s):  
Timothy Perttula

There is a single ancestral Caddo ceramic vessel in the vessel collections at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin from the Mack Spencer site (41CS6) near the Sulphur River in Cass County, in East Texas. The 2D documentation of the vessel is put on record in this article.


Author(s):  
Timothy Perttula

Both 41AG9 (ET-609) and 41AG10 (ET-610) were identified and recorded by Gus E. Arnold in late 1939-early 1940 under the auspices of the very successful WPA University of Texas archaeological survey of East Texas; they are only ca. 400 m apart. The sites are on elevated alluvial landforms in the Percella Creek valley; Percella Creek is an eastward-flowing tributary to the Angelina River, and joins the river about 3 km to the east of the sites (Figure 1). During Arnold’s archaeological survey, he collected substantial numbers of ceramic vessel sherds from both sites, and the sites were in plowed fields with good surface visibility. 41AG9 was estimated to cover ca. 1.5 acres, and had midden deposits, as well as disturbed remnants of Caddo burial features. Midden deposits and remnants of possible disturbed Caddo burial features were also noted at 41AG10, and the core of the site covered a ca. 60 x 60 m area (ca. 0.9 acres).


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.


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

The De Rossett Farm and Quate Place sites were among the earliest East Texas archaeological sites to be investigated by professional archaeologists at The University of Texas (UT), which began under the direction of Dr. J. E. Pearce between 1918-1920. According to Pearce, UT began work in this part of the state under the auspices of the Bureau of American Ethnology, and that work “had led me to suppose that I should find this part of the State rich in archeological material of a high order.” The two sites were investigated in August 1920. They are on Cobb Creek, a small and eastward-flowing tributary to the Neches River, nor far to the northeast of the town of Frankston, Texas; the sites are across the valley from each other. The De Rossett Farm site is on an upland slope on the north side of the valley, while the Quate Place site is on an upland slope on the south side of the Cobb Creek valley, about 2 km west of the Neches River, and slightly southeast from the De Rossett Farm. Both sites have domestic Caddo archaeological deposits, and there was an ancestral Caddo cemetery of an unknown extent and character at the De Rossett Farm.


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.


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