Documentation of Unassociated Ceramic Vessel Funerary Objects in the Gregg County Historical Museum Collections from Sites in Gregg, Harrison, and Panola Counties in East Texas

Repository Citation Perttula, Timothy K.; Selden, Robert Z. Jr.; and Nelson, Bo (2014) "Documentation of Unassociated Ceramic Vessel Funerary Objects in the Gregg County Historical Museum Collections from Sites in Gregg, Harrison, and Panola Counties in East Texas," Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State: Vol. 2014 , Article 12. https://doi.org/10.21112/ita.2014.1.12 ISSN: 2475-9333 Available at: https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ita/vol2014/iss1/12

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Documentation of Unassociated Ceramic Vessel Funerary Objects from Sites in East Texas
List of Tables 1. Reported inventory of funerary objects in burials at the J. O. and Henry Brown site (Jones 1968:132-140

Introduction and Purpose of the Study
This report is the latest in a series of reports that have been supported by the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, Cultural Preservation Program that concern the documentation of funerary objects in museum facilities that are subject to the provisions and regulations of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) (Gonzalez et al. 2005;Cast et al. 2006;Perttula et al. 2007Perttula et al. , 2009aPerttula et al. , 2009bPerttula et al. , 2010aPerttula et al. , 2011. These documentation studies have been done either with grants from the National Park Service, or through funding provided by the museum facility that held NAGPRA funerary objects. In the case of the present study of unassociated Caddo funerary objects from a series of sites in the collections at the Gregg County Historical Museum in Longview, Texas, the documentation effort was supported by a 2013 NAGPRA grant provided by the National Park Service (NPS) to the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma.
During the course of the current NAGPRA grant, we completed documentation in July 2013 of 158 ceramic vessel funerary objects in the Gregg County Historical Museum collections. These vessels are unassociated funerary objects that are part of the extensive Buddy Calvin Jones collection of vessels from several East Texas counties ( Figure 1). They include unassociated funerary objects from the Peanut Patch or Patton site (41HS825, n=50 vessels), the J. O. and Henry Brown site (41HS261, n=32 vessels), the C. D. Marsh site (41HS269, n=6 vessels), and the Susie Slade site (41HS13, n=13 vessels). Five other archeological sites have no trinomials but have vessels that we have also documented for this project: the Darco Coal Mine site (n=4 vessels), the Eli Fields site (n=21 vessels) and Marshall Red Gully site (n=3 vessels) in Harrison County; the Hyte site (n=27 vessels) in northern Gregg County; and the Beckville site (n=1 vessel) in northwestern Panola County.

Ceramic Vessel Documentation Protocol
Because of the number of ceramic vessels in the Gregg County Historical Museum NAGPRA collections that we were able to document under this NPS NAGPRA grant, we established a documentation protocol to assist in the study of each of the vessels examined in 2013. Each of the ceramic vessels in the collections is described and illustrated utilizing a consistent set of ceramic morphological, functional, and stylistic attributes modeled after the presentations in Gonzalez et al. (2005), Cast et al. (2006), Perttula et al. (1998Perttula et al. ( , 2007Perttula et al. ( , 2009aPerttula et al. ( , 2009bPerttula et al. ( , 2010aPerttula et al. ( , 2011, and Perttula (2005Perttula ( , 2011. The purpose of the documentation is to thoroughly characterize the assemblage of ceramic vessels in the collection from the various sites. Vessel documentation includes a photograph of each vessel to portray their decoration, shape, and surface texture. In the case of a number of ceramic vessels, engraved design motifs on bowls, compound bowls, and bottles are closely compared with East Texas Caddo ceramic types and varieties defined by Suhm and Jelks (1962), Perttula (2011), and Perttula et al. (2010b).
The following attributes were employed in this ceramic vessel study: Non-plastics: Deliberate and indeterminate materials in the paste (Rice 1987:411), including a variety of tempers (grog or crushed sherds, bone, hematite/ferruginous sandstone, shell, quartz sands, etc.) and "particulate matter of some size." The grog, bone, and hematite/ferruginous sandstone non-plastics appear to have been deliberately added to the paste as tempers. The bone used for temper had been burned and calcined, then crushed, before it was added to the paste.
Vessel Form: Vessel form categories include open containers (bowls of several sizes, including effigy bowls, carinated bowls, and compound bowls) and restricted containers, including jars and bottles, as well as plates. As restricted containers, jars allow access by hand, but bottles do not (Brown 1996:335). Other form attributes that were recorded include the rim profile (outflaring or everted, vertical or standing, and inverted), lip profile (rolled to the exterior, rounded, flat, or thinned), and base shape (flat or rounded).
Core Colors: Observations on ceramic cross-section colors permit consideration of oxidation patterns (Teltser 1993:Figure 2A-H), and thus the conditions under which the vessel was fired and then cooled General Location of Other Sites after firing. Comments are included for these attributes on the presence and location of fire-clouding, sooting or smudging from cooking use (Skibo 1992), and charred organic remains.
Wall Thickness: Thickness was recorded in millimeters, using a vernier caliper, at the lip, along the rim, at several points along the body, and at the base when possible (only for the vessels that were not complete).
Interior and Exterior Surface Treatment: The primary methods of finishing the surface of the vessels includes either smoothing, burnishing, and polishing (Rice 1987:138). Brushing, while a popular method of roughening the surface (particularly the body) of large and small Middle (ca. A.D. 1200Middle (ca. A.D. -1450 and Late Caddo (ca. A.D. 1450Caddo (ca. A.D. -1680 period cooking jars in several parts of the Caddo area, is here considered a decorative treatment rather than solely a functional surface treatment (cf. Rice 1987:138), although not all Caddo ceramic analysts treat brushing as a decorative treatment (cf. Gadus et al. 2006:31). Smoothing creates "a finer and more regular surface… [and] has a matte rather than a lustrous finish" (Rice 1987:138). Burnishing, on the other hand, creates an irregular lustrous finish marked by parallel facets left by the burnishing tool (perhaps a pebble or bone). A polished surface treatment is marked by a uniform and highly lustrous surface finish, done when the vessel is dry, but without "the pronounced parallel facets produced by burnishing leather-hard clay" (Rice 1987:138).
The application of a hematite-rich clay slip (Ferring and Perttula 1987), either red or black, after firing in an oxidizing or reducing (i.e., low-oxygen) environment, is another form of surface treatment noted in this assemblage, although not with the frequency seen in other Caddo ceramic vessel assemblages from other parts of the Caddo archeological area (see Perttula et al. 2007Perttula et al. , 2008. The clay slip is more frequently applied on the vessel exterior, or on both surfaces, than on the interior surface, and then was either burnished or polished after it was leather-hard or dry.
Height and Orifice Diameter: These attributes, measured in centimeters, were recorded with a ruler.
Diameter at Bottom of Rim and Base Diameter: Also recorded in millimeters using a ruler, these attributes permit characterization of the overall contour and shape of the vessel.
Volume: With measurements of height and orifice diameter obtained from the Gregg County Historical Museum collection vessels, as well as other measurements of size (i.e., base diameter and maximum body width), volumes were estimated by comparison with known vessel volumes of specific forms (i.e., carinated bowl, jar, bottle, compound bowl, and bowl) in other recently documented Caddo vessel assemblages.
Decoration: Decorative techniques present in the Gregg County Historical Museum NAGPRA vessel collection from sites in East Texas include engraving, incising, trailing, punctating, pinching, brushing, and appliquéing, and on certain vessels, combinations of decorative techniques (i.e., brushed-punctated) created the decorative elements and motifs. Engraving was done with a sharp tool when the vessel was either leather-hard, or after it was fired, as were the tick marks often seen on vessels in this collection, while the other decorative techniques were executed with tools (trailing, incising, and punctation), by adding strips of clay to the wet body (appliqué), using frayed sticks or grass stems (brushing) dragged across the body surface, or fingernails (certain forms of punctations and pinching), when the vessel was wet or still plastic. Excising is considered a form of engraved decoration, where the clay is deliberately and closely marked/scraped and carved away with a sharp tool, usually to create triangular elements, tick marks, or excised punctations.
Another form of vessel decoration is the use of red (hematite or ochre) or white (kaolin clay) clay pigments that have been smeared or rubbed into the engraved lines of certain vessels.

Hyte Site, Gregg County, Vessels
The Hyte site is an ancestral Caddo cemetery on Panther Creek in northern Gregg County. Panther Creek is a northward-flowing tributary to Little Cypress Creek. Buddy Jones excavated at least five burials at the site in January 1965, based on available notes, maps, and vessel numbers. The burials were those of adult individuals laid in the graves in extended supine position with assorted funerary objects placed in the graves, including ceramic vessels, arrow point caches, and yellow and red clay pigments. Burial 1 was known to have had five ceramic vessels; Burial 2 had six ceramic vessels, nine arrow points (Maud and Perdiz types, based on a burial drawing), and yellow and red clay pigment; and Burial 3 had four ceramic vessels and several arrow points ( Figure 2).
There are 27 ceramic vessels from burials at the Hyte site in the Gregg County Historical Museum collections. Only a few of them can be associated with specific burials at the site: Burial 2 (three vessels), Burial 3 (one vessel), Burial 4 (one vessel), and Burial 5 (one vessel). The others are from non-specific and lost burial proveniences.
The utility ware and fine ware vessels from the site are indicative of a Late Caddo period (ca. A.D. 1450-1680), Titus phase cemetery in the Big Cypress Creek heartland (cf. Fields and Gadus 2012:Figure 9.12). The principal fine wares at the Hyte site include several varieties of Ripley Engraved, Wilder Engraved, and Turner Engraved, and utility wares include Pease Brushed-Incised and an assortment of incised, punctated, and brushed jars.

Susie Slade Site (41HS13) Vessels
The Susie Slade site is an ancestral Caddo settlement and cemetery on a sandy knoll in the Potters Creek valley in the Sabine River basin. Jones (1968) excavated three burials of historic age (i.e., post-A.D. 1685) at the site ( Figure 30). The Susie Slade site is known to have had a large cemetery (> 50 burials) that was excavated by a number of East Texas collectors and amateur archeologists. These burials were spaced from 1.8-4 m apart, and they were oriented in extended supine position in east-west pits, with the head of the deceased facing to the west or southwest (Jones 1968:102).

Figure 30. Map of the burial area, and Burials 1-3, at the Susie Slade site.
In June 1962, Buddy Jones excavated the aforementioned three burials. Funerary objects reported from Burial 1 included five ceramic vessels, large blue glass beads, an iron knive, a pottery polishing stone, a piece of petrified wood with crystals ( Figure 31), and red and green clay pigments (Jones 1968:105). Burial 2 had six ceramic vessels, 30 marine conch shell beads (Figure 32), gray clay pigment, and a deer mandible (Jones 1968:106). Burial 3 was reported by Jones (1968:108) to have had four pottery vessels. Seven other broken but reconstructable ceramic vessels had been found placed in the burial fill above the head of the burials, and these are assumed to have been part of the rituals associated with the interment of the deceased. Of the 22 ceramic vessels reported by Jones (1968: Table 3) from the Susie Slade burials, there are 13 ceramic vessels that can be identified from these burials in the collections at the Gregg County Historical Museum, six vessels from Burial 1, two vessels from Burial 2, and five vessels from Burial 3.   The vessel rim has engraved rectilinear panels and overlapping horizontal-vertical lines, while the vessel body has four sets of meandering scroll bands that end in hooked arms. The areas between the scroll bands is filled with numerous negative ovals and rectangles outlined by excising ( Figure 37, see also Jones 1968:Plate 19b).

J. O. and Henry Brown Site (41HS261) Vessels
The J. O. and Henry Brown site (41HS261), also referred to as the Brown Burial Site 1, was first documented and excavated by Jones (1968). His work was in an ancestral Caddo cemetery (A on Figure  46) with at least nine burials on an alluvial terrace on the west side of Potters Creek, a southern-flowing tributary to the Sabine River ( Figure 46); a possible village area is marked B on Figure 46. Burials 3-9 and a "Last Burial" (not assigned a burial number or a ceramic vessel number by Jones) were excavated by Jones in 1963and 1965(Jones 1968. These burials were oriented east-southeast, with the heads of the deceased likely facing west or northwest. According to Jones (1968), three of the nine burials known to have been excavated at the J. O. and Henry Brown site contained European trade goods (glass beads and iron knives from Burials 1, 3, and 9), as well as aboriginal funerary objects (ceramic vessels, a clay pipe, chipped stone knives and arrow points) and a red ochre mass (Table 1). There are a total of 32 ceramic vessels that have been identified from these burials (as well as one ceramic vessel from the "Last Burial") in the Gregg County Historical Museum collections.

C. D. Marsh Site (41HS269) Vessels
A total of at least eight burials were excavated at the C. D. Marsh site on Eight Mile Creek by Jones in 1959Jones in -1960 (Figure 79), including Burial 1, an historic (dating after ca. A.D. 1685) Caddo period burial (Jones 1968:89); European trade goods found with this burial include two small silver disks. The other burials (Burials 2-8) are part of an earlier Caddo cemetery that is thought to be associated with the ca. A.D. 1350-17th century Pine Tree Mound community along the Sabine River and its tributaries (Fields and Gadus 2012:663 and Figure 9.10). Jones (1968:85) suggests that these latter burials are from a ca. A.D. 1200-1500 Caddo cemetery.
There are a total of six ceramic vessels from the ca. A.D. 1200-1500 burials at the site that are unassociated funerary objects in the Gregg County Historical Museum collections. This includes one vessel each from Burials 5 and 8; the provenience of the other vessels at the site is unknown.
According to Jones (1968: Figure 6) and notes on file at the museum, these burials are located ca. 120 m east-southeast from the one Historic Caddo burial at the site (see Figure 79). The burials were placed in extended supine position in north-south oriented pits in three rows (Figure 80), with the head of the deceased at the southern end of the burial and facing north. The location of Burials 7 and 8 relative to the other burials is unknown. Funerary offerings included ceramic vessels and mussel shells.

Patton Site (41HS825) Vessels
The Patton site is an ancestral Caddo settlement with several habitation areas and an associated cemetery on an alluvial terrace (255 ft. amsl) of Arms Creek (Figure 87), a northern-flowing tributary to Big Cypress Creek in the Lake O' the Pines area. Buddy C. Jones located and excavated the site in 1964, including the investigation of a total of eight burials (Burials 1-8) with a number of funerary offerings. Since Jones' work, extensive looting of more Caddo burials (ca. 88 or more) from this Late Caddo Titus phase community cemetery has taken place (Perttula 2012: Table 13-3). The burials investigated by Jones at the Patton site occurred in two more or less east-west rows (Figure 89). Presumably the bodies of the deceased were laid in the graves in extended supine position with their heads facing west, as this was the predominant form of burial treatment for Big Cypress basin Titus phase Caddo peoples (Perttula 2012:393). Funerary offerings included ceramic vessels, "stone tools, as well as perishables such as baskets and wooden implements" (Perttula 2012:393).  According to Jones' notes and vessel numbering system, a total of 53 ceramic vessels were recovered from the eight Patton site burials, an average of 6.6 vessels per burial. Other funerary objects documented by Jones include mussel shells and green clay pigment (Burials 1 and 4) (Figure 90), a mussel shell and celt (Burial 2) (Figure 91), mussel shell (Burials 3, 6, and 8), a small and short-stemmed clay pipe (Figure 92), green clay pigment, a mussel shell, red ochre, and two chipped stone blades/knives (Burial 5) (Figure 93a-c).   The ceramic vessels include a total of 10 vessels in Burial 1; seven vessels from Burial 2; three vessels from Burial 3; six vessels from Burial 4; eight vessels in Burial 5; 11 vessels in Burial 6; three vessels in Burial 7; and four vessels in Burial 8. Another vessel (Vessel No. 53) was found by the Patton's in another burial ca. 100 m south of the cemetery. A total of 50 of these vessels from the site have been identified in the Gregg County Historical Museum collections, all unassociated funerary objects.

Darco Coal Mine Site, Harrison County, Vessels
An ancestral Caddo burial was excavated at the Darco site by Buddy Jones sometime in the 1960s, but the exact date is unknown. The site is in the Sabine River valley, along Spring Creek, a southernflowing tributary to the river, southwest of the community of Darco.
There are four vessels from the site in the Gregg County Historical Museum collections. Their decorative styles suggest the vessels are from a Caddo burial that postdates ca. A.D. 1600, and may be broadly contemporaneous with the graves at the nearby Susie Slade site.

Marshall Red Gully Site, Harrison County, Vessels
The Marshall Red Gully site is an ancestral Caddo settlement in the city of Marshall, Texas that was investigated by Buddy C. Jones in the early 1960s. Although the site has not been formally recorded, it is thought to have been located along Parker Creek, a tributary to Eight Mile Creek in the Sabine River basin (Patti Haskins, July 2013 personal communication).
There are three ceramic vessels from at least one burial at the Marshall Red Gully site in the collections of the Gregg County Historical Museum. The vessel forms and decorative styles of the vessels suggest they date to Late Caddo times, perhaps after ca. A.D. 1550 because of the occurrence of a single inverted rim engraved carinated bowl (see below).

Eli Fields Site, Harrison County, Vessels
Excavations at the Eli Fields site took place in June 1963 by Buddy C. Jones. The site, in south central Harrison County, is on a Hatley Creek alluvial terrace in the Sabine River drainage. Based on notes in the museum files, at least four ancestral Caddo burials were excavated by Jones. The burials were in extended supine position in pits in two rows that were oriented northwest-southeast, with the heads of the deceased facing to the northwest (Figure 152).
Jones' notes indicate that the four burials at the Eli Fields site had 31 ceramic vessels as funerary offerings: 10 vessels in Burial 2 ( Figure 153); eight vessels in Burial 3 ( Figure 154); seven vessels in   The vessels from the Eli Fields site include plain wares (two bowls, two carinated bowls, one bottle, and one jar), utility wares (brushed, brushed-punctated-incised, Bullard Brushed, and Pease Brushed-Incised) and fine wares. None of the fine wares are typologically identifiable but decorative elements include semi-circles, arcing lines, brackets, triangles, and ovals, as well as simple horizontal line, scroll, and scroll-circle motifs. Two engraved carinated bowls have a Redwine mode lip (see Walters 2010: Figure 4), a Middle to Late Caddo period lip treatment style in the Sabine River basin. The unique character of the fine wares suggests that the site likely dates from Middle Caddo period times, since such diverse and typologically unidentifiable fine wares typify ceramics from this period.

Beckville Site, Panola County, Vessel
The Beckville site is located in the Martin Creek valley, in the Sabine River basin, ca. 3.3 km north of the town of Beckville in Panola County, Texas. In 1955, Buddy Jones investigated the remnants of a burial that had been exposed in a new road cut. There is a single ceramic vessel from this burial in the Gregg County Historical Museum collections. While the vessel shape, use of temper, and firing conditions are consistent with a Caddo Indian affiliation for this vessel, its lack of decoration hinders any more specific East Texas temporal or spatial/cultural group identifications.

NAGPRA Findings and Recommendations
This report has documented NAGPRA funerary objects from nine different sites in the Gregg County Historical Museum collections in Gregg, Harrison, and Panola counties, in the East Texas Pineywoods. The archeological evidence that has been reviewed in this study, and the documentation of the funerary objects from burial features at the sites indicate that the NAGPRA objects are associated with Middle Caddo (ca. A.D. 1200-1450), Late Caddo (ca. A.D. 1450-1680), and Historic Caddo (post-A.D. 1680 burial features.
We have made the following findings under NAGPRA for the Gregg County Historical Museum NAGPRA collections from the nine East Texas sites: First, the funerary objects documented at the Hyte, Susie Slade, J. O. and Henry Brown, C. D. Marsh, Patton, Darco Coal Mine, Eli Fields, Marshall Red Gully and Beckville sites, and the information in the Gregg County Historical Museum files on the context of these offerings, as part of this study are from ancestral Caddo burials dating from ca. A.D. 1250 to the early 18 th century. It is well known from archeological, bioarcheological, historical, archival, and oral historical records that the prehistoric and early Historic Caddo peoples are ancestral to the modern-day Caddo Nation of Oklahoma (Rogers and Sabo 2004: Figure 1), and these nine sites are situated within the ancestral territory of the Caddo people. Consequently, the funerary objects from the burial features at these sites documented in this report are culturally affiliated with the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma as defined in 25 U.S.C. 3001, Section 2 and Code of Federal Regulations, Title 43, Part 10, Section 10.2(e). These funerary objects include 158 whole ceramic vessels as discussed and documented in this report; Second, the preponderance of archeological evidence supports this finding, namely (a) the manner of burial practice when that information is available (i.e., in a pit or grave where the body of a deceased ancestral Caddo individual was laid in the grave with a variety of funerary objects placed around the body); (b) the kinds of funerary objects placed with the deceased, including culturally diagnostic and well-recognized Caddo pottery types; and (c) the fact that whole pottery vessels on Caddo sites are, to a greater than reasonable certainty, from offerings from Caddo burial features; and third, because there are no human remains in the Gregg County Historical Museum NAGPRA collections associated with these whole ceramic vessels, these ancestral Caddo funerary objects are considered unassociated funerary objects (25 U.S.C. 3001, Section 2 (3)(b) and Code of Federal Regulations, Title 43 Section 10.2(d)(2)(ii)).