Renewed Archaeological Investigations at the Bowles Creek (41CE475), Cornfield (41CE476), and Peach Orchard (41CE477) Sites in the Bowles Creek Valley, Cherokee County, Texas

Cite this Record Perttula, Timothy K. and Stingley, Kevin (2017) "Renewed Archaeological Investigations at the Bowles Creek (41CE475), Cornfield (41CE476), and Peach Orchard (41CE477) Sites in the Bowles Creek Valley, Cherokee County, Texas," Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State: Vol. 2017, Article 1. https://doi.org/10.21112/ita.2017.1.1 ISSN: 2475-9333 Available at: https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ita/vol2017/iss1/1


Introduction and Summary of Previous Investigations
There are a number of Allen phase Historic Caddo sites on Bowles Creek (Figure 1)

T E X A S
2 Journal of Northeast Texas Archaeology 71 (2017) and length and 30-50 cm in depth) as well as three units (Units 1-3, generally 1 x 1 m in size) done by of animal bone from Unit 3, 40-50 cm bs, at the site. The radiocarbon age of this AMS sample from the Bowles Creek site is 410 + 24 years B.P. (D-AMS 11799), or A.D. 1540 + 24. The 2 sigma calibration (95 percent probability) of this radiocarbon age, using IntCal13 (Reimer et al. 2013), is A.D. 1525 + 84. preserved at the site.
An additional sample of material culture remains from the Bowles Creek site was obtained by Stingley in July and August 2015, primarily from areas recently disturbed by wild hogs (see Perttula and animal bones and teeth in this surface collection, as well as a gray novaculite Cuney arrow point.
the site before the investigations reported on herein, a 2 acre area of the landform was recently plowed and disked, and archaeological evidence of a Caddo settlement was obtained from a surface collection the site area to improve its grass cover, and this plowing provided an opportunity to complete a comprehensive surface collection of the site area from November to December 2015. After the site area and the was laid out over the known surface spatial distribution of ancestral Caddo ceramic sherds (Perttula and rated, two ceramic elbow pipe sherds, a clay coil, two burned clay pieces, 12 chipped stone tools (includcracked rock, four animal bones, and 14 mid-nineteenth to early 20 th century historic artifacts (Perttula -the highest density of all categories of Caddo artifacts is in a 700 square meter area in the central and

Bowles Creek Site (41CE475)
Bowles Creek channel (Figure 2), and one other shovel test was placed between the channel cut bank and the remainder of the shovel tests. All but one shovel test contained ancestral Caddo artifacts in a reddishbrown sandy loam deposit (Table 1). The sandy loam sediments ranged from 40-100+ cm in thickness, and where the clay B-horizon was encountered, it was a red clay. The sandy loam deposits increase in thickness from north to south towards the creek channel.  In addition to these shovel tests, the cut bank of Bowles Creek was examined, and ancestral Caddo that there are buried Caddo archaeological deposits both north and south of the creek channel, and that these deposits trend upwards to merge with the archaeological deposits encountered in the shovel tests on the low alluvial rise. The deposits encountered in Shovel Test BC-1, near the northern cut bank of the Caddo ceramic vessel sherds (see Table 1).
The density of artifacts in the positive shovel tests is 8.7 artifacts per positive shovel test (Table 2), or ca.
part of the landform (see Figure 2). Ceramic vessel sherds comprise 95 percent of the recovered artifacts, there is one ceramic elbow pipe sherd from ST 40, and the remaining 4 percent are pieces of lithic debris.
was encountered in the excavations there. Our purpose in excavating Unit BC-2 was to assess the subsurface character of the archaeological deposits and determine if features were present in this part of the site.
The archaeological deposits in Unit BC-2 are a reddish-brown sandy loam to 50 cm bs. At 40 cm, the cm bs (Figure 3b), while Stain 5 extended to 74 cm bs, and also had straight sides and a rounded bottom. The size of the post holes in the unit suggest that a portion of a Caddo house structure was encountered in the excavations.

b.
Artifacts recovered in Unit BC-2 include plain and decorated ceramic vessel sherds (n=144), animal bone (n=20), wood charcoal (n=11), charred nutshells (n=3), lithic debris (n=3), and a polished quartzite pebble resting at 31 cm bs. The most concentrated deposits of archaeological material culture remains Table 3. Distribution of artifacts from the 1 x 1 m unit at the Bowles Creek site.

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The ceramic vessel sherds from the Bowles Creek site are primarily from grog-tempered vessels -   Table 5). They have either diagonal or parallel incised lines overlying parallel brushing marks. Two utility ware sherds incised or punctated decorative elements comprise 11.0 and 3.4 percent of the utility wares, respectively, from the Bowles Creek site.
var. Freeman, the latest of the Poynor Engraved varieties. Both sherds are from carinated bowls that have a single horizontal engraved line above the carination, and with an engraved vertical bracket (Figure 4a-b). A rim sherd in the assemblage has a single horizontal engraved line beneath the lip, and a zone of closely-spaced vertical engraved lines (Figure 4d). A single grog-tempered elbow pipe sherd was recovered between 30-35 cm bs in ST 40. It is a Var. C the lip, and opposed horizontal lines along the remainder of the pipe stem, running underneath the base of the pipe bowl. Var. C elbow pipe forms in the upper Neches River basin were made between ca. A.D.
Totals 23 45 2 1 71 _________________________________________________________________________________________ lithic debris and a ground stone tool from 0-20 cm bs in ST B-3 (see Table 7). The ground stone tool is a ferruginous sandstone bi-pitted stone.
utility ware vessels. The plain to decorated sherd ratio in this assemblage is 0.51.

Following the systematic surface collections at the Peach Orchard reported by Perttula and Stingley
Each shovel test contained ancestral Caddo artifacts, primarily ceramic vessel sherds (Table 10).  The archaeological deposits at the site are shallow, ranging from 14-30 cm bs of sandy loam sediments overlying a red clay B-horizon (see Table 10). These deposits are shallowest in the southern part of the systematic surface collection grid. The highest densities of artifacts occur in the core area of the surpositive shovel test and ca. 54 artifacts per square meter of archaeological deposits (Table 11). Ceramic assemblage. There were also burned clay (n=1), animal bone (n=2), and one sherd of 19 th century green wine bottle glass in ST 477-10.  Additional numbers of artifacts, almost exclusively ceramic vessel sherds, were collected from the systematic surface collection grid at the Peach Orchard site (Table 12). These supplement the artifact col-  (2017) 17 Of the 120 decorated sherds in the assemblage, 93.3 percent are from utility ware vessels (see Table  13). The plain to decorated sherd ratio of the assemblage is a low 0.44.
More than 78 percent of the decorated sherds in this assemblage from the Peach Orchard site are ley Brushed-Incised vessels with brushing marks and overlying diagonal or parallel incised lines.   Table 14). Sherds from incised vessels comprise only 1.8 percent of the utility wares.  Ceramic Assemblage Comparisons sites are very similar with respect to the proportion of the different ceramic wares at the three sites, in the use of grog vs. bone as temper inclusions of choice in vessel manufacture, and in the composition of Spradley Brushed-Incised, and Lindsey Grooved utility wares. Sherds with brushed, brushed-incised, and brushed-punctated decorative elements dominate the assemblages at each of the sites, comprising beonly 4.1-7.0 percent or 1.5-2.3 percent, respectively, of the decorated sherds in the three assemblages. Fine wares account for 7.7-9.5 percent of the decorated sherds at these Bowles Creek sites (Table 15). The Neche cluster of ceramic vessel sherd assemblages that have been studied to date includes Allen investigated component of the George C. Davis site (41CE19) on the northern part of the terrace east of the Neches River. These components have high proportions of brushed sherds to plain sherds and ra-0.12-0.47 for the Allen phase components and 0.82 for the one late Frankston phase component at the George C. Davis site. These assemblages are almost exclusively comprised of grog-tempered vessels, but differences between the sites in the proportion of bone-tempered vessels (either as the sole temper or in combination with grog)-and in the brushed/plain and brushed to other wet paste sherds-suggest that three contemporaneous groups of Allen phase sites are present in the Neche cluster. These groups (I, II, to the brushed/other wet paste sherd ratios, except in the case of the Group III and Group IV components on the Neches River. *percentages will total to more than 100 percent because some sherds have more than one kind of temper **sherds with multiple decorative elements (i.e., brushed-incised or brushed-punctated, etc.) are counted as both brushed and as other wet paste sherds

Summary and Conclusions
this work, in addition to remote sensing investigations led by Dr. Duncan P. McKinnon at the three sites, intensive shovel testing was completed at all three sites, and a single 1 x 1 m unit was excavated at the Bowles Creek site. This work has helped clarify the extent and depth of the archaeological deposits at the three sites, and has gathered information on the character of habitation areas, the likelihood that cultural features are present, and the preservation of plant and animal remains in the archaeological deposits. The Creek site is currently the best available archaeological evidence that indicates that Caddo structures are preserved there. Further archaeological work is planned at the three Historic Caddo, Allen phase sites, as