Caddo Ceramic Vessels from the E. B. Minter (41HP2) and Roger Attaway (41HP15) Sites in Hopkins County, Texas

Abstract

A number of ancestral Caddo ceramic vessels are in the collections at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin from the E. B. Minter (41HP2, n=4 vessels) and Roger Attaway (41HP15, n=5 vessels) in Hopkins County, Texas. We recently had the opportunity to fully document these vessels as part of our long-term efforts to characterize ancestral East Texas Caddo vessel forms, temper usage, and stylistic/decorative elements. The University of Texas conducted excavations at the E. B. Minter site, in the upper White Oak Creek and Sulphur River basin, in May 1931. A 60 x 35 ft. area was excavated on a sandy knoll at that time based on a report that ceramic vessels and ceramic pipes had been found there in years past, but no features were found. A second area by a county road exposed Burial 1 at a depth of ca. 77 cm bs; Jackson noted that ceramic vessels had been found in this area months earlier by road grading work along the road. Burial 1 was laid out in an east-west orientation. The Roger Attaway Farm site (41HP15) was located in the Spring of 1929 when heavy rains exposed a Caddo burial with five ceramic vessels and two arrow points. This site was 2 miles northwest of Black Oak, in the upper Caney Creek valley in the upper Sabine River basin. Mr. Attaway collected the exposed funerary objects, and then gave them to a Mr. George E. Cowan. Cowan sold four of the vessels to the University of Texas shortly thereafter.