7 - Caddoan Settlement Patterns in the Arkansas River Drainage

Abstract

This chapter describes the Caddoan settlement patterns in the Arkansas River drainage. It also describes the settlement patterns within a Caddoan subregion according to the categories recognized as important to cross-cultural description of the structure and organization of prehistoric cultural systems. A preliminary model of this sub-region is constructed from a synthesis of the available data on Caddoan settlement patterns in the Arkansas River Basin. The patterns of prehistoric occupation of the Arkansas Basin have slowly emerged from surface survey and site excavation over the past 30 years. In a review of settlement pattern research, Parsons isolated four data controls critical for successful settlement pattern study: (1) a control over site sample, (2) a refined chronology, (3) a paleo-environmental reconstruction, and (4) a functional interpretation of structures, activities, and sites. The chapter also discusses the hierarchy of centers in detail. As common and conventional as it is to consider, the Caddoan cultural traditions separately from the Mississippian to the east, the one aspect in which it is more advantageous not to do so is in terms of subsistence settlement patterns.