Documentation of Early Caddo Period Ceramic Vessels from the George C. Davis Site on the Neches River in Cherokee County, Texas

Repository Citation Perttula, Timothy K. (2016) "Documentation of Early Caddo Period Ceramic Vessels from the George C. Davis Site on the Neches River in Cherokee County, Texas," Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State: Vol. 2016 , Article 57. https://doi.org/10.21112/.ita.2016.1.57 ISSN: 2475-9333 Available at: https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ita/vol2016/iss1/57

The George C. Davis has had the most extensive investigations of any Caddo mound site, including very large scale archaeo-geophysical work (Walker and McKinnon 2012:181-189), and archaeologists have done an exemplary job in publishing the results of their investigations, beginning with the seminal 1949 study prepared by H. Perry Newell and Alex D. Krieger (1949,2000). Taken together, the extensive nature of the work (see Story 1969Story , 1972Story , 1981Story , 1997Story , 1998Story , 2000, the quality of the archaeological investigations, and the unique archaeo-geophysical data set, suggest that the George C. Davis site strongly exempli es the character of a Caddo civic-ceremonial community in the Caddo archaeological area, and through its study has shed unique light on the origins and elaboration of the Caddo cultural tradition. n this article, document, using a standardi ed protocol, the ancestral Caddo vessels and vessel sections that have been recovered from various kinds of features at the George C. Davis site since excavations began at the site in 1939. I also discuss the stylistic and functional character of this unique vessel assemblage. The analysis of the recovered ceramic vessels and sherds from the George C. Davis site has been ongoing since the 1940s (e.g., Arnold 1973Arnold , 1975Descantes et al. 2005; Marchbanks 1989;Stokes and Woodring 1981), and has included innovative work in the chemical characteri ation of the ceramics as well as the preservation of lipids in samples of ceramic vessels and sherds. Dr. Robert Z. Selden has also obtained 3-D scans of many of the vessels discussed in this article.

Archaeological Context of the Site and the Ceramic Vessels
Archaeological excavations that have occurred at the George C. Davis site since 1939 have revealed many preserved features in the mounds and village areas (evidence of wood structures, outdoor activity areas, borrow pits, burial pits and shaft tombs, discrete mound lls, and mound ramps) (Figure 2). These excavations have encompassed approximately 3.4 acres (ca. 13,860 m 2 ), or only about 3 percent of the known site area (Story 2000). Recent archaeo-geophysical surveys of a 110 acre area of the site has also identi ed over 70 Caddo architectural features as well as possible burials and even possible public spaces or plazas that were previously unknown and remain unexcavated at the present time (Walker and McKinnon 2012). The 115 radiocarbon dates from a number of cultural features at the George C. Davis site (Story and Valastro 1977) can be combined into three groups (Table 1 and Figure 3) of 2 sigma calibrated age range with all but two calibrated dates falling in Groups 1 and 2. For the 47 Group 1 calibrated dates, the highest probability (64 percent) is in the A.D. 940-995 range, at the end of the Formative Caddo period (ca. A.D. 800-1000). The combined Group 2 calibrated age range of 66 date is A.D. 1185-1258, at the latter end of the Early Caddo period (ca. A.D. 1000-1200) and the rst part of the Middle Caddo period (ca. A.D. 1200-1400). On the basis of the present set of calibrated and combined radiocarbon dates from the George C. Davis site, the overall Caddo occupation there took place between A.D. 940-1258.

Documentation of the Ceramic Vessels
Archaeological investigations at the George C. Davis site since the late 1930s-eartly 1940s have recovered 47 Caddo vessels or vessel sections that are in the collections of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin. The majority of the vessels (n=27, 57 percent) are from the 1939-1941 WPA investigations in and around Mound A and immediately adjacent village areas (see Newell andKrieger 1949, 2000;Story 2000). Another 28 percent are from 1968-1970 University of Texas investigations in Mounds B and C (Story 1997(Story , 1998, four vessels (8.5 percent) are from 1978 University of Texas investigations in village areas (Thurmond and Kleinschmidt 1979), and the remaining three vessels are from miscellaneous contexts. All of the vessels are associated with Early Caddo period Alto phase archaeological deposits and cultural features.

1939-1941 WPA Investigations
The vessels from the 1939-1941 WPA investigations are not from burial features, but are reconstructed from sherds deposited in archaeological deposits in or below Mound A, the large platform mound at the George C. Davis site, or in Caddo structures adjacent to Mound A. This includes two vessels found stratigraphically between Feature 37, an oval house built in a depression or pit (Newell and Krieger 1949:35), and a later house (Feature 31) built over the earlier oval house; another vessel in Feature 33, a large circular house that "lay about half in the village area and half under the mound" (Newell and Krieger 1949:35); and a Crockett Curvilinear Incised vessel in Feature 42, a structure in the village area (Newell and Krieger 1949:44). Four other vessels are from Feature 5 in the Inner Village at the site, just north of Feature 3, an oval-shaped house, and south of Mound A (see Newell and Krieger 1949: Figure 4). This was a "concentration of broken pottery… possibly piled in a shallow pit" (Newell and Krieger 1949:52).

University of Texas Excavations
The vessels in the 1978 excavations at the George C. Davis site are reconstructed from the more than 1370 sherds in the ll of a large trash pit in the village area (Thurmond and Kleinschmidt 1979:15-17

Summary and Conclusions
The 47 vessels and vessel sections from the George C. Davis site (41CE19) in the collections of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory include ne wares, utility wares, and plain wares. These vessels are from a variety of mound (Mound A and B) and non-mound habitation features, as well as vessels from a series of elite burials with single to multiple numbers of individuals in Mound C; these burials also contain an assortment of other kinds of locally made and non-locally obtained funerary offerings.
There are ve vessel forms in the vessel assemblage, about equally divided between bottles, bowls, jars, and carinated bowls ( Table 1). The bottles are exclusively ne ware forms, while at least one or two of the three wares are represented in the other four vessel forms. Plain wares (Bowles Creek Plain) comprise 8.5 percent of the vessel assemblage, and utility wares (Crockett Curvilinear Incised, Davis Incised, Dunkin Incised, Duren Neck Banded, Kiam Incised, Pennington Punctated-Incised, and Weches Fingernail Impressed, var. Weches) account for another 34 percent of the vessel assemblage. The remaining 57 percent are ne wares, including Holy Fine Engraved, Hickory Engraved, a red-slipped vessel, and an unidenti ed engravedpinched jar (Table 1). Bowls are most frequently represented among Holly Fine Engraved vessels, while jars are most common among the Bowles Creek Plain, Dunkin Incised, and Weches Fingernail Impressed, var. Weches vessels. The carinated bowls in the assemblage are almost exclusively Holly Fine Engraved and Pennington Punctated-Incised vessels, and the one compound bowl is a Crockett Curvilinear Incised vessel (see Table 1).
The vessels at the George C. Davis site are almost exclusively tempered with grog (i.e., crushed sherds or pieces of red clay) ( Table 2): 97.9 percent of the vessels have grog temper. Two other grog-tempered vessels also have had crushed pieces of burned bone added to the paste, and four vessels had crushed pieces of hematite or ferruginous sandstone added to the paste during vessel manufacture. Only one vessel (2.1 percent of the vessel assemblage) is tempered solely with crushed and burned pieces of bone. About 27 percent of the engraved ne ware vessels in the George C. Davis vessel assemblage have had red hematite-rich (n=6) or white kaolin (n=1) clay pigments added to the engraved decorative elements. This includes one Hickory Engraved jar, three Holly Fine Engraved bottles, two Holly Fine Engraved bowls, and one Holly Fine Engraved carinated bowl. The red pigments were clearly preferred by the Caddo potters at the George C. Davis site, particularly on Holly Fine Engraved vessels.
According to Bobby Gonzalez of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma (April 2008 personal communication), "the red pigment means life and is very sacred among the Caddo. The red pigment is now used on peyote staffs, and during ritual ceremonies and prayer meetings, the red pigment is painted on and in the ears as well as on the top of the head in the middle of a man's hair line, running from front to back; the women and men paint themselves in the morning when the sun comes up." Vessels found in features in and around the Mound A platform mound, and in burial features in Mound C, with a red pigment likely are from vessels that symbolize life and its sacredness to the Caddo. It is possible that the red pigment seen on vessels placed in Caddo burials at the George C. Davis site may have been added to the vessels shortly before they were placed in graves with the deceased.