Test Excavations and Additional Surface Collections at the Peach Orchard Site (41CE477) on Bowles Creek in Cherokee County, Texas

Cite this Record Perttula, Timothy K. and Stingley, Kevin (2017) "Test Excavations and Additional Surface Collections at the Peach Orchard Site (41CE477) on Bowles Creek in Cherokee County, Texas," Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State: Vol. 2017, Article 31. https://doi.org/10.21112/ ita.2017.1.31 ISSN: 2475-9333 Available at: https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ita/vol2017/iss1/31


Test Excavations and Additional Surface Collections at the Peach Orchard Site Test Excavations and Additional Surface
other aspects of the assemblage are consistent with Neche cluster sites. Perhaps these sites were settlements occupied by a Neche or Nechas Caddo group during the late 17th-early 18th century Spanish colonization of the middle reaches of the Neches River, yet inhabited before sustained French trading activities after ca. A.D. 1720, but when several missions were established in this general locale. site. This is followed by a consideration of the analysis of the recovered artifacts in the work, and a review of the character of the Peach Orchard ceramic assemblage found at the site in several rounds of work.
Four 1 x 1 m units (Units 1-4) were excavated within the surface collection unit grid at the Peach Orchard site (Figure 2). All four units were placed within the core area of the habitation deposits as based collection units 8 (Test Unit 4), 9 (Test Unit 1), 10 (Test Unit 3), and 13 (Test Unit 2). Unit 3 was placed The archaeological deposits in the four units consist of a reddish-brown sandy loam A-horizon overlying a red clay B-horizon at depths between 16-25 cm bs. No features or organic staining were noted in the units.
A total of 435 artifacts were recovered in Test Units 1-4 (Table 1), with the highest densities in Unit 3 (n=130) and Unit 1 (n=115). More than 92 percent of the recovered artifacts are ceramic sherds, both plain and decorated, followed by lithic debris (4.6 percent) and mid-to late 19 th century historic artifacts (2.8 percent). The artifacts are concentrated between 0-20 cm bs, in the A-horizon deposits.

Artifact Analyses
A total of 875 artifacts were recovered in the March 2016 investigations at the Peach Orchard site. This includes 435 artifacts from Test Units 1-4 and 440 from surface collections in a number of 10 x 10 m units. More than 92 percent of the artifacts are sherds from ceramic vessels.

Ceramic Sherds
wares (7.6 percent of the decorated sherds in the sample) and 573 sherds (92.4 percent) from utility ware vessels (Table 4); sherds with brushing marks (either as the sole decoration or in combination with other wet paste decorative elements) comprise 86 percent of this decorated sherd sample. The sherds are almost exclusively from grog-tempered vessels, as only 1.5 percent of the sherds have burned bone temper. ___________________________________________________________________________ ware type in the Neches River basin. These sherds have parallel brushing marks with overlying incised lines oriented in several directions (see Table 5). Three body sherds are from Lindsey Grooved vessels; this is incised and incised-punctated ( Figure 5) rim and body sherds are from Maydelle Incised vessels, while the sherds with pinched ridges are from Killough Pinched jars.

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River basin. These sherds have straight or curvilinear engraved lines with excised triangular tick marks (Figure 6a-c). They may be from Patton Engraved, var. Allen, var. Freeman, or var. Fair vessels (Perttula 2011: Figure 6-66). Another sherd is from a King Engraved vessel (Figure 6d). Other engraved sherds body sherd with a rectilinear element (Figure 6f), and a parallel engraved body sherd with a narrow vertical hatched zone (Figure 6g). The two trailed sherds are likely from Keno Trailed vessels.

Lithic Debris
Forty-six pieces of lithic debris came from the March 2016 work ( ___________________________________________________________________________ About 39 percent of the lithic debris in this sample from the Peach Orchard are pieces of non-local chert (n=17), likely from Edwards Formation chert sources well west of the site, and one piece of white novaculite (see Table 6). Novaculite cobbles are available no closer than the Red River, well to the north of the Peach Orchard site.
The last piece of lithic debris is a core fragment of Manning Fused Glass from Surface Collection Unit 13. Manning Fused Glass is a fused volcanic glass from the Manning Formation in Southeast Texas and the southernmost part of East Texas (Brown 1976: Figure 3). This raw material was exploited by Caddo knappers in Cherokee and Nacogdoches counties from the Early Caddo period to the Historic Caddo period (Brown 1976:196-199).

Burned Clay
Five small pieces of burned clay are in the March 2016 artifact assemblage, including two pieces in the test units (Unit 2, 10-20 cm bs and Unit 3, 0-10 cm bs) and three pieces in surface collection grids (Surface Collection Units 8, 16, and 17). The burned clay pieces are likely remnants of clay hearths or earth ovens.

Animal Bone
The single piece of animal bone in the March 2016 assemblage is a deer tooth fragment from 0-10 cm bs in Unit 3.

Historic Artifacts
Historic artifacts of mid-to late 19 th century age (n=14) were collected in Test Units 1-4 (n=12) and from the surface collection grid (n=2) ( Table 7). Most are sherds from beer and wine bottles (n=9) as well as late 19 th century Bristol glaze stoneware sherds (n=3), a rim sherd to an aqua fruit jar, and a plain whiteware body sherd. These artifacts are the residue of trash disposal of broken artifacts from a nearby late 19 th century house place. The low density of artifacts in the test units and surface collections indicate that the house place is not located in the surface collection grid at the Peach Orchard site. The test excavations indicate that the archaeological deposits, a reddish-brown sandy loam, range from 0-25 cm in thickness overlying a red clay B-horizon. No cultural features or evidence of organic suggest there are preserved pit features and at least one Caddo structure in the geophysical survey grid (see McKinnon 2016). Artifacts from the Historic Caddo component at the site were relatively common in the test units, ca. 105.8 artifacts per square meter, and in the surface collection grid units, mainly wood), and burned clay pieces. There are also a few artifacts from a mid-to late 19 th century settlement at this locale along Bowles Creek.
More than 3150 ceramic vessel sherds have been recovered from the Peach Orchard site in all phases of work conducted there (Table 8). More than 98 percent of the sherds are from grog-tempered vessels, and the majority of the sherds are from brushed utility ware Bullard Brushed jars. The plain to decorated sherd ratio is a low 0.37. Other utility wares in the assemblage are from Killough Pinched, La Rue Neck Banded, Lindsey Grooved, and Maydelle Incised vessels, but they are uncommon, amounting to no more than 0.1-4.5 Keno Trailed vessels.
As has been discussed previously, the ceramic assemblage from the Peach Orchard site is consistent with a Neche cluster of historic Caddo Allen phase sites on Bowles Creek and the Neches River (see Perttula 2016: Table 3). These assemblages are almost exclusively comprised of sherds from grogtempered vessels, and with high proportions of brushed sherds to plain sherds (1.77-7.50) and substantial ratios of brushed to other wet paste sherds (5.0-13.0). Between 81-87 percent of the decorated sherds in Neche cluster sites are from brushed vessels: at the Peach Orchard site, 84.5 percent of the sherds have brushing marks (see Table 8).
We thank Lonnie Lindsay for permission to conduct these archaeological investigations. Lance Trask