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


INTRODUCTION AND SITE CONTEXT
There is a collection of plain and decorated ceramic sherds in the Gregg County Historical Museum from a feature descri ed as either a re pit or a hearth e ca ated y uddy Cal in ones in March 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 18 th century Nadaco Caddo component (Jones 1968;Perttula 2012; see also Perttula, this volume), but it also has a Middle Caddo period (ca. A.D. 1200-1400) component. In Jones' (1968:48) 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 (see Jones 1968: igure 4). The excavation of a re pit or hearth in any area at the site is not mentioned by Jones, but it seems likely that the " re pit hearth" may be the same feature as the aforementioned refuse pit. In any case, this " re 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 (1968:56-57 and Plate 9a-c), the refuse pit had "Hickory ngraved, Dunkin Incised, variant types, unidenti ed 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 oor of the pit.

Ceramic Sherd Assemblage
There are 201 plain and decorated ceramic vessel sherds from the re pit hearth feature at the Cherokee Lake site (Table 1). About 86 percent of the sherds are from grog-tempered vessels, and the remaining 14 percent are from burned bone-tempered vessels. About 73 percent of the decorated sherds are from utility ware jars, and the ne wares include both carinated bowls and bottles. The plain to decorated sherd ratio of this ceramic sherd assemblage is 1.39. The utility ware sherds are from vessels with punctated (22.6 percent of the decorated sherds from the site), incised (19.0 percent, and 61.5 percent of the utility ware rims), brushed (16.7 percent), incisedpunctated (11.9 percent, 30.8 percent of the utility ware rims), brushed-incised (1.2 percent), and brushedpunctated (1.2 percent, and 7.7 percent of the utility ware rims) ( Table 2). Rim sherds from utility ware vessels include a brushed-punctated Pease Brushed-Incised rim with a row of tool punctations under the vessel lip, horizontal brushing, and a row of tool punctations pushed through the brushing (Figure 1a), and a number of incised rims from Maydelle Incised vessels; one other rim has a horizontal incised line decoration. The Maydelle Incised rims have cross-hatched, diagonal, and diagonal incised lines (Figure 1b).
Three of the incised-punctated rim sherds have incised triangle elements around the vessel rim formed with diagonal opposed incised lines, and the triangles are lled with tool punctations (see Figure 1c). These are also from Maydelle Incised jars (see Suhm and Jelks 1962:Plate 52e). Another rim has a broad curvilinear incised zone lled with tool punctations (see Figure 1e), while a lower rim-upper body sherd, possibly from a Dunkin Incised jar, from the Cherokee Lake site has rows of tool punctations on the body and diagonal opposed incised triangles on the rim that are alternately lled with tool punctations (see Figure 1d).
Body sherds with rows of punctations are common in this ceramic assemblage from the Cherokee Lake site, with circular, ngernail, and tool punctated elements (see Table 2). About 74 percent of the punctated body sherds have tool punctations.
The engraved sherds from the site include both carinated bowl and bottle sherds ( Table 3). The rim sherds from engraved ne wares at the site primarily have straight line or geometric elements featuring horizontal, diagonal, cross-hatched, and horizontal-diagonal lines (Figure 2a   There are also two rims in the engraved ne wares with curvilinear or semi-circular decorative elements. One has a large curvilinear zone lled with diagonal engraved lines (see Figure 2d), while the other had a small semi-circle at the top of the rim and a small excised dot at its center (see Figure 2c).
Five of the engraved sherds in this assemblage from the Cherokee Lake site are from bottles. This includes a Hickory Engraved bottle body sherd with horizontal engraved lines, two bottle body sherds with curvilinear engraved lines, a bottle sherd with sets of closely-spaced diagonal engraved lines between panels lled with closely-spaced horizontal lines (see

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
Buddy Calvin Jones excavated a re pit/hearth at the Cherokee Lake site (41RK132) in March 1956, and obtained a sample of plain and decorated sherds (n 201) from the feature ll. This feature is likely in Area A of the site (Jones 1968: Figure 4), but its exact location is not stated in the available provenience information. Most of the sherds are from grog-tempered vessels.
While the Cherokee Lake site is best known as an early 18 th century Nadaco Caddo site (Jones 1968), the site appears to have also been occupied in prehistoric times by Caddo peoples. The decorated sherds in the re pit/hearth assemblage do not appear to be from vessels of known Historic Caddo age and Kinsloe phase contexts (Perttula 2007: Table 1, Table  13). Dunkin Incised, Hickory Engraved, and Holly Fine Engraved sherds in this Cherokee Lake ceramic assemblage may also be a part of this occupation-and thus its early Middle Caddo period attribution-but it is possible that they are from an older, pre-A.D. 1200 ancestral Caddo occupation.