Abstract
Although this paper is primarily a reinterpretation of the Sanders site in the Red River Valley in northeastern Texas, that reinterpretation will make no sense unless I first outline, very quickly, the new paradigm for the archeology of the Arkansas Valley in eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas upon which it is based. For the last five years, as I am sure most of you know, I have been challenging the standard interpretation of the archeology of the Arkansas Valley in eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas--the Northern Caddoan Area paradigm. I have done this on the grounds that there is no documentary evidence and no archeological evidence for a Caddoan connection of any sort other than trade. In my view the basic biological and cultural ties of this tradition, which I call the Arkansas Valley tradition, were, as Bell has speculated, to the east with peoples of the Central and Lower Mississippi Valley, not to the south with the Caddoan area or to the west with the Wichita. I suspect, as I have said before, that this tradition was a part,at least, of the long lost ancestral Tunican tradition.
Highlights
This article is available in Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State: https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ita/vol1993/iss1/8
For the last five years, as I am sure most of you know, I have been challenging the standard interpretation of the archeology of the Arkansas Valley in eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas--tbe Northern Caddoan Area paradigm
I decided that the thing to do was read all the literature carefully and try to produce a complete reinterpretation of Arkansas Valley archeology, starting from the premise that it was culturally distinct from the Caddoan area
Summary
Part of the American Material Culture Commons, Archaeological Anthropology Commons, Environmental Studies Commons, Other American Studies Commons, Other Arts and Humanities Commons, Other History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons, and the United States History Commons Tell us how this article helped you Cite this Record Schambach, Frank (1993) "Spiroan Entrepots at and Beyond the Western Border of the Tans-Mississippi South," Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State: Vol 1993, Article 8. The botanical and cultural evidence indicates that the Arkansas Valley tradition had a significantly more diverse subsistence system than the Middle Mississippian tradition or even the Caddoan tradition This system featured hoe horticulture (unknown in the Caddoan area) of most of the plants of the old Woodland period "Cultivated Starchy Seed Complex of the O:r.ark highlands plus some com. This is indicated by the bison bones, bison bone tools, and bison hide processing tools such as diamond shaped beveled knives and uniface end scrapers that appear in significant quantities at Spiro phase and Harlan phase sites such as School Land I and
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