Caddo Ceramic Vessels from the T. M. Sanders Site (41LR2) on the Red River in Lamar County, Texas

Timothy Perttula,Bo Nelson,Mark Walters

doi:10.21112/ita.2016.1.4

Abstract

The T. M. Sanders site (41LR2) is one of the more important ancestral Caddo sites known in East Texas, primarily because of its two earthen mounds and the well-preserved mortuary features of Caddo elite persons buried in Mound No. 1 (the East Mound). The Sanders site is located on a broad alluvial terrace just south of the confluence of Bois d’Arc Creek and the Red River. The terrace has silt loam soils, which have a shallow dark brown silt loam A-horizon overlying thick B- and C-horizons that range from dark reddish-brown, reddish-brown, dark brown, to yellowish-red in color. These soils formed in loamy alluvial sediments of the Red River. In this Special Publication, we discuss the analysis and documentation of the 78 ceramic vessels from the T. M. Sanders site in the collections of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin. Our concern is in documenting the stylistic and technological character of these vessels, and assessing their cultural relationships and stylistic associations; almost 80 percent of these vessels are from burial features excavated by University of Texas archaeologists in Mound No. 1 (East Mound) in July and August 1931; others are from excavations in midden deposits between the two mounds. We also consider and revise the current ceramic taxonomy for a number of the vessels from the T. M. Sanders site.

Highlights

There are seven ceramic vessels (9.2 percent) in this component that have not been assigned to a defined type
21.1 percent of the Bois d’Arc Plain vessels are bone-tempered, 16.7 percent of the Sanders Slipped vessels are bone-tempered, and none of the Sanders Incised or Monkstown Fingernail Impressed vessels were manufactured with bone temper
Both vessels were recovered in the midden excavations between the two mounds, likely in unrecorded or unrecognized burial features there

Summary

Introduction

Sanders site began with Krieger’s analyses (1946, 2000, 2009) of the burial features and associated funerary objects (including marine shell gorgets, shell beads, arrow points, and ceramic vessels) These analyses and studies continue to the present day, and rely upon the reanalysis and reinterpretation of the archaeological (Bruseth et al 1995; Hamilton 1997; Jurney and Young 1995; Perttula 1997, 2013; Schambach 1995, 1999, 2000a, 2000b) and bioarchaeological (Maples 1962; Wilson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997; Wilson and Cargill 1993; Wilson and Derrick 1996) materials recovered in the Pearce and Jackson (1931) and Jackson et al (2000) work. Archaeological survey investigations conducted in 2014 indicate that there are archaeological deposits on the alluvial terrace of the Red River that sits at 450 feet amsl These deposits are distributed both south and east of the East and West Mounds, extending approximately 1260 m east from the East Mound and approximately 960 m south of the West Mound (Figure 3), an area of approximately 300 acres, with distinctive clusters of surface collected artifacts beginning close to both mounds. Sanders site burial features (and midden excavations) are “remarkably uniform in shape, decoration, paste, and finish.”

Methods of Vessel Analysis

Findings

Summary and Conclusions