41NA197, the Sam Stripling Site, on Bayou Loco in Nacogdoches County, Texas

Abstract

The Sam Stripling site (41NA197) is an ancestral Caddo settlement on a series of alluvial knolls in the floodplain on the east side of Bayou Loco in the Angelina River basin in the East Texas Pineywoods. The site was first located by Robert L. Turner, Sr. and Jr. in 1938, and in 1939 they told Gus Arnold of the University of Texas about the site when Arnold was conducting a Works Progress Administration (WPA)-sponsored archaeological survey of East Texas. Arnold collected a large sample of ceramic vessel sherds from the site (ET-601) during his 1939 survey work, and these collections are held by the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin; the Turner’s had also amassed a substantial collection during their work; and in 1996 Tom Middlebrook returned to the site and officially recorded it, noting a well-preserved midden deposit in one part of the site, while also inventorying the Turner’s collection. In this article, I discuss the specific character of the ancestral Caddo ceramic assemblage from the Sam Stripling site recovered during Arnold’s work. Analyses by Middlebrook of the other known collections from the site are in progress.