Ancestral Caddo Ceramics from Three Sites on Mill Race Creek, Wood County, Texas

Abstract

Archaeological survey investigations were conducted in 1987 and 1988 in a large tract of land along Mill Race Creek, a southwestward-flowing tributary to Lake Fork Creek in the East Texas Pineywoods. During the course of the survey, ancestral Caddo ceramic sherds were recovered from 15 sites, including the reanalyzed sherds from the three sites discussed in this article. The Haines Varner Allen site (41WD573) is located on an upland landform overlooking the Mill Race Creek valley; it is an ancestral Caddo settlement with midden deposits that cover about 1.2 acres and has deposits that are a maximum of 75 cm in depth. The Audrey E. Allen-Smith site (41WD575) is ca. 250 m west-southwest of the Haines Varner Allen site, and is also situated in the uplands, but near the headwaters of a spring-fed tributary to Mill Race Creek. This site covers a 60 x 60 m area, with deposits ranging from 40-100 cm+ in thickness; there are midden deposits preserved in one part of the site. The Ned Moody site (41WD577) is located on a level upland landform 700 m west of the confluence of Mill Race Creek and Red Branch; there is a spring-fed tributary ca. 470 m to the southwest. The site is ca. 100 x 75 m in size, with 55 cm thick archaeological deposits. There were three concentrations of surface artifacts noted at the site, primarily sherds from Caddo vessels, and these spatial concentrations “may represent refuse deposits associated with separate Caddoan [sic] households.".