Caddo Ceramic Sherds Research Articles

Ancestral Caddo Ceramic Sherds from 2016 Investigations at 41MR211, Marion County, Texas

Renewed archaeological investigations in 2016 by the Texas Historical Commission at the early 19th century Caddo site 41MR211 recovered a small number of ancestral Caddo ceramic vessel sherds from a variety of contexts in Locus 3 (Table 1), which is located just east of the main 1999 excavation block (Figure 1). The sherds are from grog-tempered (70 percent) and shell-tempered (30 percent) vessels. In the larger vessel sherd assemblage (n=368) reported by Parsons et al. (2002a, 2002b) from 41MR211, 36.8 percent of the sherds are from shell-tempered vessels and 59.4 percent are from vessels made with grog temper.

Caddo Ceramic Sherds from Leon River Valley Sites in Coryell County, Texas

This article is concerned with the consideration of “Caddo connections” as expressed in the character of the ceramic assemblages from three sites in the Leon River valley in Central Texas that have been considered to have Caddo pottery and were occupied by Prairie Caddo peoples; these ceramic assemblages are in the collections of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin (TARL). Of particular importance are the stylistic (i.e., decorative methods and decorative elements) and technological (i.e., choice of temper inclusions) attributes of the sherds from the sites that are from plain ware, utility ware, and fine ware vessels.

The Caddo Ceramic Sherd Assemblage from the W. T. Robinson Farm (41AN4), Anderson County, Texas

The W. T. Robinson Farm site (41AN4) is one of a number of ancestral Caddo sites known in the Caddo Creek valley in the upper Neches River basin in East Texas. The site, about 2.5 miles northwest of Frankston, Texas, was investigated by archaeologists from the University of Texas (UT) in 1931 in an area where locals had reportedly excavated 15 Caddo vessels some 20 years earlier. The UT investigations found no Caddo burials or vessels, and recovered only a small assemblage of ceramic vessel sherds.

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

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.".

Caddo Ceramic Sherd Assemblage from a Hearth Feature at the Cherokee Lake Site (41RK132) in Rusk County, Texas

There is a collection of plain and decorated ceramic sherds in the Gregg County Historical Museum from a feature, described as either a fire pit or a hearth, excavated by Buddy Calvin Jones in March 1956 at the Cherokee Lake site (41RK132) on Toawichi Creek in northern Rusk County, Texas. This assemblage is discussed in this article. The Cherokee Lake site is best known for its early 18th century Nadaco Caddo component, but it also has a Middle Caddo period (ca. A.D. 1200–1400) component. In Jones’ discussion of work he conducted at the Cherokee Lake site, he mentions the excavation of an Historic Caddo burial as well as a large “refuse pit” of prehistoric age, both in Area A of the site. The excavation of a fire pit or hearth in any area at the site is not mentioned by Jones, but it seems likely that the “fire pit/hearth” may be the same feature as the aforementioned refuse pit. In any case, this “fire pit/hearth” feature at the Cherokee Lake site contained a considerable number of plain and decorated ceramic sherds, as did the “refuse pit.” According to Jones, the refuse pit had “Hickory Engraved, Dunkin Incised, variant types, unidentified types of punctated and incised wares,” as well as a small Bullard Brushed jar, a fragment of a second Bullard Brushed jar, both from the upper part of the pit, and fragments of a plain bowl from the floor of the pit.

The Caddo Ceramic Sherd Assemblage from the Hawkins Site (41SM144) on the Sabine River in Smith County, Texas

The Hawkins site is an ancestral Caddo habitation site on a Sabine River bluff about 1.7 km southwest of the confluence of Little White Oak Creek with the river, in the Pineywoods of Smith County. The site was located and investigated in the 1950s by Sam Whiteside of Tyler, Texas. This article is concerned with the analysis of the Caddo ceramic wares from the site, as well as an assessment of the probable age and cultural affiliation of the Caddo occupation.

East Texas Caddo Ceramic Sherd Database

A considerable amount of effort has been expended over the years by archaeologists in the identification, description, and classification of ancestral Caddo ceramic vessels and sherds recovered from sites across East Texas, beginning with the masterful efforts of Alex D. Krieger. These analyses have led to an appreciation of the stylistic, technological, functional, and morphological character of Caddo ceramics, as well as their age, and their role in the identification and scale of social networks of different Caddo communities in existence as early as ca. A.D. 850 to the early 19th century. The purpose of the compilation of attribute-level data on Caddo ceramic sherds in East Texas is to build on the understandings already achieved through many years of study by numerous individuals regarding the stylistic, technological, and functional character of Caddo ceramics. This compilation is a distillation of 50+ years of the analysis and study of Caddo ceramics—particularly the quantification of the methods of decorations present on sherds from different assemblages—and a compilation that is useful for both present and future detailed studies of the sherds from ceramic vessel made by perhaps 40 or more generations of skilled Caddo potters.

Ceramic Petrographic Analysis of Sites 41CP71, 41BW2, 41BW5, and 41SM442, Northeast Texas

A total of 61 ancestral Caddo ceramic sherds from four village sites in Northeast Texas were studied by ceramic petrographic methods in 2014. The sample sherds were excavated from their sites under controlled conditions and were either archived at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin (41BW2), Stephen F. Austin State University (41CP71), or remain in private hands (41SM442). Recently, they were selected for combined petrographic and instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA), although only the sherds from the Alligator Pond site (41SM442) have actually been submitted and analyzed by INAA at this time. This combination of approaches is part of a change in Northeast Texas ceramic technological studies termed a second generation by some (Robinson 2014), although such multiple combined approaches have long been advocated and applied in general archaeological literature. The approach looks at the geochemical and petrological characteristics of ceramics in tandem to gain a broader and more informative background on the character of ancient pottery. This study is the petrographic branch of the overall approach; the objective here is to gain clues or suggestions on local, community, and regional scales of Caddo ceramic production and distribution. Part of this effort is to attempt to identify localities and types of clay beds used in ceramic manufacture.

Analysis of a Small Sample of Caddo Ceramic Sherds from the T. M. Sanders Site (41LR2), Lamar County, Texas

This article documents several small collections of Caddo ceramic vessel sherds from the T. M. Sanders site (41LR2) in northwestern Lamar County, in East Texas. These vessel sherds were collected from the surface in 2011 and 2012, and provided to the author for analysis.

Luminescence Dates from the Tuinier Farm Site (41HP237), Hopkins County, Texas

The luminescence dating of ceramics has been applied with some considerable success in a variety of settings—and on different ceramic wares—in North America, but since the days of Alpha Analytic (a subsidiary of Beta Analytic) in the early to mid-1980s, there have been no luminescence dating of Caddo ceramic wares in Northeast or East Texas. Given the abundance of ceramics of several different kinds and styles at all Caddo sites, the luminescence dating of both plain and decorated sherds recovered in situ from these many sites should be explored since it is a method “that dates the manufacture and use of…ceramic objects [that] provide a closer relationship between the target event [when a site is occupied] and the dated event [the age determined by the luminescence on a sherd]. Luminescence is particularly well suited for the dating of ceramics since the method measures the time elapsed since vessels were last heated, usually corresponding to manufacture or use." In this article, we discuss the results of recent luminescence dating on a small sample of Caddo ceramic sherds at the Tuinier Farm site (41HP237).

Documenting Caddo Ceramic Sherd and Lithic Collections from Prehistoric Sites at Lake Bob Sandlin

Following on the heels of a previous archaeological effort where we documented collections of ceramic and lithic artifacts from a wide variety of prehistoric archaeological sites along the shoreline at Lake Bob Sandlin, this article puts on record the range of prehistoric ceramic and lithic artifacts in collections we recently documented from four sites at the lake in Camp and Titus counties, Texas. One of the four sites has been previously reported in the Caddo archaeological literature, but the other three have not.

Documentation of Caddo Ceramic Vessel Sherds from the Shelby Site (41CP71) in the Vernon Holcomb Collection, Camp County, Texas

The Shelby site (41CP71) is an important Late Caddo period, Titus phase, religious and political center on Greasy Creek in the Northeast Texas Pineywoods. The site, occupied from the 15th century A.D. until at least the late 17th century A.D., is a large and well-preserved settlement with abundant habitation features as well as plant and animal remains, evidence of mound building activities in the form of a 1.5 m high structural mound, and a large community cemetery with at least 119 burial pits and perhaps as many as 200. The Shelby site is the nexus of one of a number of Titus phase political communities in the Big Cypress Creek stream basin. Nevertheless, very little is known archaeologically about the site—or the history of the Caddo’s settlement there—since almost all the work done at the site since it was discovered in 1979 has been by looters. Perttula and Nelson completed a limited amount of work in the village area in 2003, and Bob Turner and others worked in the 1.5 m high structural mound between 1985-1988, but an overall synthesis of the Caddo occupation at the Shelby site awaits more extensive professional archaeological investigations. One key step in any professional archaeological work that may be forthcoming at the site includes the documentation of Caddo material culture remains, especially Caddo ceramics, that are known to have come from the site, as they provide a record of the temporal, functional, and stylistic range of the ceramic vessels used and discarded at the site, as well as evidence of interaction and contact between different but contemporaneous Caddo groups. In August 2009, I had an opportunity to document a collection of Caddo ceramic sherds held by Vernon Holcomb from the Shelby site. He collected these sherds from the surface of the site some 25-30 years ago where they had been eroded out of the banks of a dry or intermittent stream branch that drains north to Greasy Creek.

Caddo Ceramics from an Early 18th Century Spanish Mission in East Texas: Mission San Jose de los Nasonis (41RK200)

Mission San Jose de los Nasonis (4JRK200) and two contemporaneous Nasoni Caddo sites (41RK191 and 41RK197) were located by Mr. Bill Young more than 25 years ago in the southern part of Rusk County, Texas after the general area of the site had been cleared of timber. The mission site covers ca. 6.6 acres of an upland ridge along a small tributary to the Angelina River; the ridge projects into the Angelina River floodplain. The topographic setting of Mission San Jose conforms in all particulars to the settings of other known mission sites established among the Caddo: small hills adjacent to a floodplain, next to a stream, with the hills "lower extensions of more extensive upland areas." Corbin also notes that these missions "were located within the area of the local dispersed Caddoan village, none of the locations are places suited to support the Indian-based community that the Spanish hoped to entice to the location." This mission was established as one of six different missions by the Spanish in 1716 during their second attempt (the first being in 1690-1691) to establish a religious and political presence among the Caddo peoples in East Texas, specifically to minister to the Nasoni Caddo living in the area. Mission San Jose de los Nasonis ·was formally established on July 10, 1716. Father Espinosa and Captain Don Domingo Ramon, the leader of the expedition, had noted that there were many Hasinai Caddo ranchos in the general area along with arroyos of water and good places for settlement. Both Nasoni and Nacono Caddo were then living in this area of the Angelina river. Mr. Young made those collections available for study in 2006, and this article is a summary of the Caddo ceramics in the Mission Nasonis collections. In 1990, Dr. James E. Corbin of Stephen F. Austin State University (SFASU) and Dr. Kathleen Gilmore of the University of North Texas conducted limited excavations in Area A at the mission site, but these excavations have never been published. More than 930 Caddo ceramic sherds were recovered in that work, and are curated at SFASU; the separate analysis of these ceramic artifacts is underway.

Caddo Ceramics from the D'Ortolan Site (41NA299)

The D'Ortolan site (41NA299) is a late 1790s to 1830s ranch established by Bernard D'Ortolan on Bayou Loco, a tributary to the Angelina River, in Nacogdoches County, Texas. The ranch was known as Rancho San Bemando del Loco. Tom Middlebrook, Texas Archeological Steward, located and identified the rancho in 2003. During the course of archaeological investigations conducted at the site over the next few years, a small sample of aboriginal Caddo ceramic sherds were found on the rancho in contexts indicating that Caddo ceramic vessels were in use during the rancho occupation. These vessels had to have been obtained by the D' Ortolan ranch through purchase or trade from one of the Caddo groups living in the Angelina River valley after the 1790s. The sherds from the D'Ortolan site, along with those from 2007 excavations by Tom Middlebrook in the Plaza Principal in Nacogdoches, must represent some of the latest aboriginal Caddo ceramic wares currently known in East Texas.

Archaeological Investigations at the Henry M. Site (41NA60): An Early Historic Caddo Farmstead in Nacogdoches County, Texas

The Henry M. site (41NA60) is an early historic (post-A.D. 1680) Allen phase farmstead on a natural rise in the Bayou Loco floodplain in western Nacogdoches County in East Texas. Bayou Loco, a relatively small stream, flows south a few miles to its confluence with the Angelina River. The dam for Lake Nacogdoches on the bayou is about 1.7 miles to the north. Construction of Lake Nacogdoches inundated a number of contemporaneous Allen phase farmsteads- some of which were the scene of 1970s excavations-including 41NA18. The Henry M. site in the mid-1980s. (41NA21), Iron Rock (41NA22), Loco Bottoms (41NA23), and Deshazo (41NA27). The Bayou Loco valley has a high density of historic Caddo settlements. The natural rise that the Henry M. site is located on was in an 8 acre pasture. This rise is about 50 min diameter, ca. 1 min height, and south a short distance from an eastward-flowing spring-fed tributary to Bayou Loco. The rise has loamy alluvial Marietta soils. The main part of the Henry M. site has a ca. 10 m diameter midden deposit near the center of the natural rise. The midden deposit contains extensive amounts of Caddo ceramic sherds and many well-preserved animal bones, some mussel shell, and other artifactual debris.

Analysis of the Historic Caddo Ceramics from 41NA223 in Downtown Nacogdoches, Nacogdoches County, Texas

In 1999, the late Dr. James E. Corbin of Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas, recorded 41NA223 in a proposed parking lot associated with offices for the City of Nacogdoches. The site is located on the southern edge of an upland ridge (290 ft. amsl) between Banita Creek and La Nana Creek, southward-flowing tributaries of the Angelina River, and the area around it has a number of commercial buildings. During the course of development of the parking lot for the County Courthouse of Nacogdoches, Caddo ceramics, animal bones, and late 18th early 19th century European artifacts were found on the surface in disturbed contexts. Corbin initiated some limited archeological investigations in the parking lot area to determine what these artifacts represented functionally and culturally, as well as to assess the contextual integrity of any remaining archaeological deposits. Although no final conclusions were ever reached, Corbin concluded that 41NA223 represented a protohistoric or historic Caddo site and/or the site of the 1804 Guadalupe del Pilar mission church. In the course of those investigations-primarily a short trench and minimal hand excavations along the trench where a single pit feature had been exposed-a small assemblage of Caddo ceramic sherds (111 sherds and 60 sherdlets) were recovered from 41NA223. These sherds are the subject of this article. The purpose of this study of the 41NA223 ceramics is two-fold. First, I wish to thoroughly analyze the sherd collection in stylistic and technological terms to ascertain if the sherd collection is Historic Caddo in age, and if so, determine the general characteristics of this assemblage. And second, since "understanding the Caddo ceramics of Historic natives will be essential for workers in this area", particularly in unraveling the archaeological signatures of different Caddo groups that lived in the Angelina River basin, I hoped to make some head way in comparing the nature of this Historic Caddo assemblage with other recently described Caddo sherd collections from Nacogdoches County and the Neches/Angelina river basins.

The South Lilly #4 Site (41UR279), Upshur County, Texas

The South Lilly #4 site was discovered in early 2003 by Bo Nelson during a survey of portions of the South Lilly Creek valley in Upshur County, Texas. During the course of his survey he recorded 13 prehistoric archeological sites on the north side of the valley,just upstream from the FM 556 crossing of South Lilly Creek. No archaeological sites had been previously known or recorded along this stretch of the valley, but his survey made it apparent that there was a high density of prehistoric sites along this creek, a tributary to Big Cypress Creek. Nelson noted that several of these prehistoric sites had Caddo ceramic sherds, and/or were in locations where prehistoric Caddo habitation sites are often found in the northeastern Texas region. The South Lilly #4 site is in one such setting, namely a prominent upland ridge and knoll (360 feet amsl) that projects southward into the South Lilly Creek valley, but is elevated well above any seasonal flooding along the creek and its broad floodplain. The landform was in pasture at the time, and surface exposure was virtually nil.

Caddo Ceramics on the Red River in North Central Texas

Caddo ceramics manufactured after A.D. 900 were widely traded in Texas, being found in some quantity on North Central, East Central, Central, and inland Southeast Texas archeological sites. They were also traded with prehistoric peoples in the Midwest (as far north as Iowa and Illinois) and the Southeastern U.S. While archeologists have known this for some time, much of the ceramic evidence for prehistoric Caddoan trade and exchange with other Native Americans has not been systematically compiled and studied, as became apparent during a recent review of the prehistoric and historic aboriginal pottery in Texas. Consequently, Caddoan archeologists are not yet in the position to confidently discuss the scope, timing, or direction of trade/exchange between Caddoan groups and surrounding non-Caddoan communities, or explore changes in the nature of social and economic relationships between particular Caddo groups and other prehistoric peoples. This paper represents part of our initial efforts to begin systematically compiling archeological information on the distribution and character of Caddo ceramic sherds and vessels outside what is considered the southern Caddoan archaeological area. In it, we report on Early and Late Caddo ceramics found by Dr. Ernest R. Martin at two sites along the Red River in North Central Texas, some 130 km or more west of the westernmost Caddo settlements on the Red River in Northeast Texas.