Titus County Research Articles

The William Farrar Site (41TT1) in the Sulphur River Basin,Titus County, Texas

The William Farrar site (41TT1) is an ancestral Caddo settlement and cemetery on an alluvial terrace of the Sulphur River (Figure 1) in the East Texas Post Oak Savannah, a few miles downstream from the W. A. Ford site (41TT2) (see Goldschmidt 1935; Perttula 2016). University of Texas (UT) archaeologists completed excavations at the site in August 1934, but they had known about the site since as early as 1932, when they purchased or had donated several Caddo vessels from a Henry William Martin and, in 1934, purchased a vessel from a John Bowman, who had previously dug at the site.

Late Caddo Titus Phase Ceramics from the McKay Site (41TT730), Titus County, Texas

The McKay site (41TT730) is a multi-component site on an upland landform about 100 m east of Hart Creek, a southward-flowing tributary of Big Cypress Creek. During house construction in 1990, archaeological deposits covering about 5 acres of the landform were exposed, and these deposits include occupations that date from as early as the Paleoindian and Archaic periods to as late as Early to Late Caddo period times (ca. A.D. 900-1680). The principal ancestral Caddo component at the McKay site belongs to the Late Caddo period Titus phase, dating generally from ca. A.D. 1430-1680. This component included both habitation deposits as well as burial features in the area of house pad construction; the habitation area is at least 50 m northwest of the cemetery. At least 17 burials were excavated there by local workers after the cemetery had been exposed by land leveling, and these burials included ceramic vessels as funerary offerings, along with Talco arrow points, two ground stone celts, and a ceramic elbow pipe. The workers removed an unknown number of exposed and complete vessels, although portions of a few of these vessels were documented. Broken vessels were scattered and mixed into the fill of the house pad.

The W. A. Ford Site (41TT2), Titus County, Texas

The W. A. Ford site (41TT2) is an ancestral Caddo cemetery on a natural sandy knoll on an alluvial terrace about 2 km south of the Sulphur River, along Sanders Slough, in the northwestern part of Titus County, Texas. There are also habitation deposits of both Woodland and Caddo age at the site, but no features were identified in these habitation deposits during the 1934 University of Texas investigations. The site is located in the modern Blackland Prairie habitat, but just to the north of the northern extent of the modern Post Oak Savannah. In this article, I focus on the 11 burial features that were excavated in a small cemetery at the W. A. Ford site, which apparently are from at least two temporally sequent Caddo occupations, as well as the analysis of the 36 ceramic vessels placed as funerary offerings with nine of the 11 burials.

Early Caddo Period Ceramic Vessels from the Roger D. Simmos Site (41TT321), Titus County, Texas

The Roger D. Simmons site (41TT321) is in the Sulphur River basin in East Texas. A single ancestral Caddo burial was exposed in 1984 during the removal of sand from the site for the construction of a school in Talco, Texas. Associated with the burial were three ceramic vessels—documented herein—as well as a large (ca. 18 cm in length) chipped stone bifacial tool made from non-local chert (identified as Edwards formation chert on the site form), an adze, and a celt.

Testing and Data Recovery Excavations at 11 Native American Archeological Sites Along the U.S. Highway 271 Mount Pleasant Relief Route, Titus County, Texas Volume II

Register of Historic Places and State Antiquities Landmark testing of 11 prehistoric sites that will be impacted by construction of the proposed U.S. Highway 271 relief route around Mount Pleasant in Titus County, Texas. The work was done in 2005 for the Texas Department of Transportation’s Environmental Affairs Division under Contract No. 575XXSA006, Work Authorization No. 57501SA006. This research design provides support for a scope of work for testing, prepared as a separate document. The primary relevant historic context for future work on this project is The Development of Agriculture in Northeast Texas Before a.d. 1600 (Kenmotsu and Perttula 1993). Significant information on all nine study units defined for that context (chronology and typology, settlement systems, subsistence systems, social and political complexity, demographic change, mortuary practices, local and extralocal trade and exchange, technological change, and material culture) may be recovered. The overall project goal is to identify and explore Caddo community structure, with an emphasis on behavior and how people interacted and organized space at different spatial scales, including within single houses, on individual house lots, within villages, between one or more contemporaneous villages, and as villages and other components of the settlement system (e.g., field houses, mounds, cemeteries, agricultural fields, ceremonial centers).

Testing and Data Recovery Excavations at 11 Native American Archeological Sites Along the U.S. Highway 271 Mount Pleasant Relief Route, Titus County, Texas Volume I

This report deals with three episodes of archeological work that began in 2005 and concluded in 2010 for the proposed U.S. Highway 271 Mount Pleasant relief route in Titus County, Texas. The early part of the work was done for the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), Environmental Affairs Division. The later part was done for PTP, LP, acting on behalf of Titus County. The work was done to address the requirements of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act and the Texas Antiquities Code and was governed by the terms of Texas Antiquities Permit Nos. 3786, 4303, and 5495. The project involved 11 Native American archeological sites: 41TT6, 41TT846, 41TT847, 41TT851–41TT854, 41TT858, 41TT862, 41TT865, and 41TT866. The overall goal was to assess these 11 sites in terms of their eligibility for listing in the National Register of Historic Places and designation as State Antiquities Landmarks, and to conduct data recovery excavations at any that were found to be eligible. The project began with intensive auger or shovel testing at all 11 sites in July–August 2005. Formal testing was done between December 2006 and February 2008, and data recovery excavations were undertaken at three sites—George Richey (41TT851), William Ford (41TT852), and James Richey (41TT853)—between January and June 2010. In total, the excavations consisted of the following: 1,147 auger tests at 10 sites and 31 shovel tests at the eleventh site; 386 backhoe trenches covering 2,695 m2 and 225 m2 of manual excavations at all 11 sites; and machine excavation of 215 sample units measuring 2.0 m long and 1.0 m wide on average and trackhoe stripping of about 6,875 m2 at the 3 data recovery sites. The excavations identified 378 cultural features, mostly postholes and pits, with much smaller numbers of burials, burned rock concentrations, artifact clusters, and middens. The artifacts recovered consist mainly of 11,713 ceramic sherds and vessels and 8,729 lithic tools and debitage. Most of these remains relate to occupation of the project area during the Middle–Late Caddo periods (a.d. 1250–1700), with minor amounts resulting from earlier and later use during the Paleoindian, Archaic, Woodland, Early Caddo, and Historic Caddo periods. The primary Middle–Late Caddo components at the three fully excavated sites represent use as rural farmsteads within a dispersed local community associated with the Titus phase Caddo. At least four of the tested sites were occupied less intensively during this same interval.

The Horton Site (41CP16) on Big Cypress Creek in the East Texas Pineywoods

The Horton site (41CP16) is primarily a Late Paleoindian (ca. 10,000 years B.P.) to ancestral Caddo site (ca. post-A.D. 800), although there is a small mid-19th-early 20th century component as well. This site is on an upland slope (320-350 ft. amsl) that once overlooked the Big Cypress Creek floodplain; the channel of the creek was ca. 100 m north from the site. The site is currently under the waters of Lake Bob Sandlin. Robert L. Turner, Jr. surface collected the site during the 1950s and 1960s, and the study of this substantial artifact assemblage is the subject of this article. Dick Ping Hsu recorded the Horton site in September 1968 during the survey for then proposed Titus County Reservoir. He noted that the site was on the top of a hill, at 350 ft. amsl, and was marked by flakes and pottery sherds. When the site was re-visited and re-recorded by Southern Methodist University (SMU) in 1974 it was partially covered in pine and oak trees, as well as pecan and sweetgum. Part of the site also had an orchard and a cultivated field. Site size was estimated by SMU crews at 60 x 30 m, but Turner estimated the size of the site as approximately 1 acre. Other investigations besides Turner’s at the Horton site include previously mentioned surface collections by Hsu and Sullivan prior to the construction of Lake Bob Sandlin, and by a private collector (David Laden) (Thurmond 1990:52). These collections indicated that the Horton site had a Late Paleoindian component marked by San Patrice, Dalton, and Plainview points, lithic debris from local ferruginous, quartzite, and petrified wood, as well as a ca. post-A.D. 800 Caddo component with plain and decorated sherds (red- and brown-slipped, incised, punctated, and engraved). Thurmond suggests the Caddo component dates to the Middle Caddo period (ca. A.D. 1200-1450).

The Ear Spool Site (41TT653): A mid-15th to early 17th Century A.D. Caddo site in the Sulphur River Basin, Titus County, Texas

The Ear Spool site (41TT653) is a rather unique ancestral Caddo Settlement in the East Texas Pineywoods. More specifically, it is situated along a small tributary to East Piney Creek, itself a northward flowing tributart to White Oak Creek in the Sulphyr River Basin. What makes the site unique is its diverse architectural charter as seen in the archaeological evidence of four buildings in two different Late Caddo period, Titus phase occupations, separated by as much as 2-3 generations, from the mid- 15th to early 17th century A.D. In, particular, it is the construction of two specialized structures in the earlier Caddo occupation in shallow pits that is most notable, along with evidence of marker posts in two different intra-site contexts. Both of these structures were deliberately destroyed by burning and burial with sediments. The later structures were larger circular residential structures, one of which was deliberately burned down, but not covered with any sediments. Galan and Perttula and Sherman has discussed the archaeological investigations of the Ear Spool site in detail, characterizing the site's archaeological features and findings. However, these publications are very limited in distribution, basically being limited to Cultural Resource Management archaeologist working in Texas, but I believe that the findings from the Ear Spool site warrant broader consideration because of its distinctive and dual scared and secular nature.

Analysis of a Surface Collection from the L. A. Hale (41TT12) Mound Site, Titus County, Texas

This article, and the three that follow in this volume, are summaries of artifact surface collections obtained by Robert L. Turner, Jr. at four sites in the Big Cypress Creek basin in the Post Oak Savanna and Pineywoods of Northeast Texas. The first surface collection is from the L.A. Hale Mound site (41TTI2) on Blundell Creek, a southward-draining tributary to Big Cypress Creek. According to Thurmond, the principal component at the L.A. Hale Mound site is an Early Caddo (ca. A.D. 900-1200) mound center with extensive midden deposits. There are six mounds at the site, two large platform mounds (Mounds 1 and 2) and four low mounds that cover occupational deposits and burned house structures. There are also four large midden areas adjacent to the earthen mounds as well as at least one borrow pit. In addition to the Early Caddo component, Thurmond has recognized Late Paleoindian, Early Archaic, Middle Archaic, Late Caddo Titus phase, and an early historic Anglo-American occupation from material culture remains recovered in excavations conducted at the site in 1934 by A. T. Jackson (1934) at The University of Texas and a 1980 surface collection by Susan Lisk of The University of Texas at Austin. Turner's collection adds additional information on the occupational history of the site. The exact location of the surface collection area at the site is not known.

Artifacts in the Raymond Powell Collection from East Texas

In March 2010, Raymond Powell of Mansfield, Louisiana, allowed the examination and photographic documentation of several artifacts in his possession. The specimens were given to him approximately 60 years ago by a friend who reportedly excavated them from a burial located in either Cass County or Titus County in East Texas. The collection consists of six ceramic vessels and three stone artifacts. The vessels appear to relate to both the Late Caddo Titus phase (ca. A.D. 1430-1680) as well as to contemporaneous sites in Bowie and Cass counties on the Red River near the Great Bend area, and the lower Sulphur River, that have been associated with the Nasoni Caddo.

The Structure and Growth of a Titus Phase Community Cemetery in Titus County, Texas

TheW-S site (41TI741) is a large post-A.D. 1600 Titus phase cemetery on Swauano Creek in the Big Cypress Creek basin. The site was dug in the late 1970s by Ralph Nicholas and associates, and there are available notes and maps on his excavations on file at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin. Here I employ these notes and maps to examine the structure and growth of this particular Caddo community cemetery.

The Crabb Site (41TT650), a Prehistoric Caddo Site on Tankersley Creek, Titus County, Texas

In this article, we discuss the archaeological findings at the Crabb site (411T650), a prehistoric Caddo settlement on an upland remnant/knoll in the Tankersley Creek floodplain in Titus County, Texas. Tankersley Creek is one of the principal tributaries of Big Cypress Creek, and it flows south past the Crabb site to merge with the larger creek a few miles downstream. This part of Titus County is in the Pineywoods, an area with abundant moisture and a warm, moderate climate in modem times, with an overstory vegetation of pines and a variety of hardwoods (principally several species of oaks and hickory). Along Tankersley Creek itself, the vegetation would have been dominated by more mesic hardwoods that tolerated occasional inundation from seasonal floods and standing water in the floodplain, such as water oaks and sweetgum trees, bushes, vines, and shrubs. The Tankersley Creek valley is well-known for its archaeological resources, particularly those of prehistoric Caddo age, and numerous prehistoric Caddo sites have been identified and recorded in the valley in the last 20 years. The Crabb site is one of several dozen prehistoric Caddo sites known in the creek valley, and one where limited investigations over the last 10 years have recovered interesting archaeological information about an intensive Caddo settlement that was apparently occupied at least 600-700 years ago, if not longer. Additional archaeological work is planned at the Crabb site should time and money become available to conduct more work at this significant site, but we believe it is important for future Caddo archaeological researchers that we make available now the archaeological information that has been obtained to date from the site.

Titus Phase Archeology at the S. Stockade Site (41TT865) on Tankersley Creek, Titus County, Texas

The S. Stockade site was discovered on a small rise (330 feet amsl) in the Tankersley Creek floodplain during a recent archeological survey for the Texas Department of Transportation. Tankersley Creek is a southward-flowing tributary to Big Cypress Creek, and enters that creek’s floodplain a few miles below the Lake Bob Sandlin dam. There is a dense concentration of prehistoric archeological sites throughout the Tankersley Creek valley, particularly post-A.D. 800 Caddo Indian sites. This paper discusses the archeology of the S. Stockade site, a Late Caddoan Titus phase settlement. The rise at the S. Stockade site is grass-covered (with a surface visibility of less than 10%), except along the eroded slopes, where the clay B-horizon subsoil is exposed. The old creek channel immediately to the west of the rise has recently been channelized, and between the rise and the channelized creek are several low-lying marshy areas with standing water.

Archeological Investigations at the Frank Benson Site (41TT310), Titus County, Texas

The Frank Benson site (41TT310) is an extensive and significant prehistoric Caddo and historic 19th century archeological site on a broad upland landform (352- 372 feet amsl) overlooking the Big Cypress Creek Valley in Titus County, Texas. In this paper we discuss recent archeological investigations at the site, which identified extensive and well-preserved Middle and Late Caddo components associated with a clay mound and extensive daub deposits from at least one burned Caddo structure.

The Middle Caddoan Period in the Lower Sulphur River Area

For purposes of this review, the Lower Sulphur River in Texas includes the area of the Sulphur River basin from the Arkansas border to the eastern edge of Titus County, and encompasses the area of what is today Wright Patman Lake and the White Oak Creek Wildlife Management Area. Traditionally, the Lower Sulphur River area has been tied to cultural constructs defined in the Red River basin, to the north and east. In his ambitious overview of the Caddoan Culture Area, Don Wyckoff generally placed the Lower Sulphur River area with the cultures of the Great Bend. As defined by current usage in Texas, the Middle Caddoan period dates from A.D. 1200 to A.D. 1400, but it is actually the middle portion of a long period of indigenous Caddoan cultural development, which began anywhere from A.D. 800 to 1000 and lasted until after the arrival of the Europeans. Several researchers have suggested that the strongest (and possibly the only) evidence for continuity from the Early Caddoan period to the Late Caddoan period can be found in the area of the Great Bend of the Red River.

Questionnaire checklist for cumulative impacts

Cumulative impact considerations have been required since 1979 in the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process in the United States. Incorporation of these considerations has been minimal due to confusion over appropriate spatial and temporal boundaries in impact studies, lack of emphasis by project proponents and government agencies, and the absence of structured methodologies. The study described herein was conducted to delineate the types of cumulative impact methods being used in scientific studies and/or environmental impact statements (EISs) and to couple this information with existing EIA methodologies to delineate a generic methodology that could provide a framework for cumulative impact identification and assessment. Eight scientific studies were reviewed, and the utilized methods included five interaction matrices and/or composite indices, two geographic information systems, and one simple checklist. Five EISs were also reviewed relative to how cumulative impacts were addressed and the methodologies utilized. The five EISs included oil and gas leasing and development in New Mexico, a housing/urban development project in McKinney, Texas, a program to install and operate terminal Doppler weather radar facilities at airport locations across the United States, a reservoir project in the Rogue River Basin in Oregon, and a surface lignite mine in Titus County, Texas. All five EISs addressed cumulative impacts to some extent — a simple checklist methodology was used for each, although the checklist items differed from study to study. Based on these findings, and considering extant EIA methodologies, a structured questionnaire checklist is proposed for usage in scoping cumulative impacts, addressing detailed impact issues and summarizing the results of cumulative impact considerations in an impact study. The items in the proposed checklist will not all be applicable to all projects and impact studies. However, usage of this approach would provide a consistent beginning for systematically addressing cumulative impacts.

Test Excavations at Site 41TT87 on County Road 211 Titus County, Texas

Archaeological testing of Site 41TT87 was performed during May and June of 1989 by the State Department of Highways and Public Transportation (SDHPT). These investigations were prompted by plans by Titus County and the SDHPT to replace three wooden bridges and reconstruct the County Road 211 roadway which crosses While Oak Creek bottom. Five 1 meter square test units were excavaled which produced a number of prehistoric ceramic sherds, chert flakes, and bifacial tools of which the Gary dart point type is dominant. No prehistoric features were found and the areas available for study all exhibited prior disturbance. Historic artifacts were also recovered and included wire and cut nails, glass, sheet metal fragments, and earthenware and stoneware ceramic sherds. The major portion of the site containing the prehistoric component lies outside the right-of-way. Those portions of the site within the right-of-way are not believed to be eligible for inclusion within the National Register of Historic Places. No further investigations are recommended.

Archeological and Historical Investigations at 41TT310, Lake Bob Sandlin State Park, Titus County, Texas

Archeological and Historical Investigations at 41TT310, Lake Bob Sandlin State Park, Titus County, Texas