Woodland Period Archaeology as seen from the Attoyac Bayou Basin in East Texas

Abstract

The character of the archaeological record of the Woodland period (ca. 550 B.C.-A.D. 800) in East Texas is discussed in the context of the findings from excavations at four Mossy Grove Culture Woodland period sites at Lake Naconiche in the Attoyac Bayou basin. Of particular concern is information obtained from these sites on local Woodland period settlement patterns and features, and hints of a developing sedentism in the latter part of the period (after ca. A.D. 500/600), subsistence strategies and the use of cultivated plants, their material culture (chipped and ground stone tools and the manufacture and use of ceramic vessels), and evidence in the archaeological record for exchange and interaction between neighboring Woodland groups. The Mossy Grove Culture Woodland period groups that lived at the Lake Naconiche sites were relatively parochial huntinggathering foragers with a mobile settlement system characterized by intermittently occupied camps, and a material culture dominated by plain sandy paste pottery, dart points and bifaces, and expedient tools.