Documentation of the Caddo Ceramic Vessels from the Culpepper Documentation of the Caddo Ceramic Vessels from the Culpepper Site (41HP1) in Hopkins County in the Upper Sulphur River Basin Site (41HP1) in Hopkins County in the Upper Sulphur River Basin in East Texas in East Texas

Cite this Record Perttula, Timothy K. (2016) "Documentation of the Caddo Ceramic Vessels from the Culpepper Site (41HP1) in Hopkins County in the Upper Sulphur River Basin in East Texas," Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State: Vol. 2016, Article 51. https://doi.org/ 10.21112/.ita.2016.1.51 ISSN: 2475-9333 Available at: https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ita/vol2016/iss1/51


Introduction
The Culpepper site (41HP1) is a late (post-A.D. 1600) Titus phase site in the upper Sulphur River basin in ast Te as ( i ure 1).t is on a san noll alon si e Stouts Cree a s all north ar -o in strea in the White Oak Creek basin of the larger Sulphur River drainage.The site is in the modern-day Post Oak Savannah (Diggs et al. 2006:Figure 2), but there are areas of tall grass prairie between Stouts Creek and White Oak Creek; the larger White Oak and Sulphur prairies lie approximately 15 km to the west and northwest (see Jordan 1981).Excavations at the Culpepper site by University of Texas (UT) archaeologists in 1931 uncovered a number of ancestral Caddo burial features with associated ceramic vessel funerary offerings.These ceramic vessels are presently curated at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin (TARL).In this article I document and analyze the Culpepper site vessels to better ascertain the likely chronological age and social and cultural af liation of the Caddo populations that occupied the Stouts Creek area, as well as their interrelationships with other known Caddo communities in East Texas.

Archaeological Context
The Culpepper site is one of a number of known late Titus phase Caddo sites along Stouts Creek in Hopkins County, Texas (Figure 2).These sites have habitation archaeological deposits as well as family cemeteries.They are part of a very distinctive western Titus phase community that lived in the Post Oak Savannah in the Stouts Creek valley in the 16 th century and much of the 17 th century A.D (see Perttula 2009).
Their uni ue archaeological nature rests in the character of their material culture: particularly with the ne ware and utility ware ceramics they made and used (among them Anglin Impressed, a new utility ware type), as well as the abundance of clay ear spools and gurine fragments found in domestic contexts, suggesting they were in regular use within the community, and the use of marine shell Clements style ear disks, also found in domestic contexts.These particular kinds of artifacts are rarely found at any other Caddo sites in Northeast Texas, and thus they speak to the distinctive cultural practices and adaptive strategies employed by this Titus phase community to successfully thrive in the Post Oak Savannah of Northeast Texas.By all measures, this community thrived until ca.A.D. 1700, after which the Caddo apparently abandoned the area.
The Culpepper site was excavated in May 1931 by a UT archaeological crew led by A. T. Jackson (Scurlock 1962:286).The work focused on a small cemetery on a sandy knoll on the east side of Stouts Creek (Figure 3).There was a midden deposit about 25 m southwest of the cemetery, and ceramic sherds and projectile points were recovered in the UT work there (Scurlock 1962:301-310).
In the early 1900s, a ood along Stouts Creek exposed human skeletons and associated ceramic vessels; in following years collectors periodically worked out at the site, and according to Scurlock (1962:286), these collectors dug 14 burials and recovered 25 pottery vessels.The site came to the attention of UT in September 1930, when they purchased a number of vessels from the site that had been in the collections of a B. F. Perkins of Weaver, Texas.UT followed up the ceramic vessel purchases by conducting eld work the following year (see Figure 3).
The 1931 UT excavations uncovered eight burial features (Table 1) in all parts of the sandy knoll (see Figure 3).These were single, extended supine Caddo burials, mainly placed in the grave pits with their heads facing west, southwest, or northwest.Burials 2, 3, and 7 had been previously disturbed by collectors, Burial 1 had been disturbed by ooding along Stouts Creek, and Burials 4 and 8 had been disturbed by plowing and or past ooding (Scurlock 1962:288).Associated funerary offerings included whole or portions of 39 ceramic vessels, three Talco arrow points (Scurlock 1962:Figure 12g), and one celt (Scurlock 1962:Figure 14c).2).

Vessel Documentation
At the present time, only 36 vessels from the Culpepper site could be located in the TARL collections; one of these vessels is presently on loan to the Star of the Republic Museum in Washington on the Brazos, Texas.In addition to eight vessels from the site purchased by UT in 1930, and one vessel with no known provenience, there are 27 ceramic vessels from Burials 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 in the TARL collections.None of the vessels from Burials 4 and 8 were located in the TARL collections.According to Scurlock (1962:290-291), the vessels from Burial 4 included Taylor Engraved, Hodges Engraved, and Nash Neck Banded, while those from Burial 8 were identi ed as Taylor Engraved, Ripley Engraved (n 2), and one of unknown type that was missing from the collection when Scurlock analyzed the Culpepper site vessels.The one Hudson Engraved bottle is shell-tempered, as are two Taylor Engraved jars or deep bowls (see Table 4).The other shell-tempered ne ware vessel is a bowl with distinctive rectilinear hatched and crosshatched engraved elements (see Figure 31).

SITE NAME OR SITE
More than 31 percent of the ne ware vessels have had either a red (n 6) or white (n 3) clay pigment rubbed in the engraved designs.All three of the Womack Engraved, var.Culpepper carinated bowls have a red clay pigment, as does one Ripley Engraved, var.Gandy carinated bowl, a Taylor Engraved spool-necked bottle, and a Simms Engraved, var.Darco carinated bowl.The ne ware vessels with a white clay pigment include a Keno Trailed bottle, a Ripley Engraved, var.Carpenter carinated bowl, and a Ripley Engraved, var.Gandy carinated bowl.
Nine different ne ware vessels (31 percent) have had a red slip applied to the interior and exterior vessel surfaces.These include the two shell-tempered Taylor Engraved jars or deep bowls, four Ripley Engraved carinated bowls (three of var.Gandy and one var.Carpenter), and three vessels (two carinated bowls and a jar) with unidenti ed engraved elements; the engraved jar has decorative elements very similar to several vessels recovered in ca.A.D. 1650-1700 contexts at McCurtain phase Caddo sites on the Red River (see Perino 1983Perino , 1994)).
Including the one Womack Engraved, var.Culpepper carinated bowl from the Tuinier Farm site (41HP237) (Figure 34), the range of vessels of de ned types is very similar to the vessel assemblage from the Culpepper site (Table 5).Ripley Engraved vessels comprise 27.8 percent of these vessels.Simms Engraved and Taylor Engraved vessels are also common at the other Stouts Creek sites.La Rue Neck Banded is the most common utility ware in the burial vessels at these sites.Two of the vessels (11.1 percent) are shell-tempered McCurtain phase vessels: a Hudson Engraved bottle and a Nash Neck Banded jar (Table 5); 11.4 percent of the vessels from the Culpepper site are shell-tempered.The late Titus phase ceramic assemblages at the known sites on Stouts Creek, including the Culpepper site discussed in this article, belong with the western ceramic tradition of the Titus phase Caddo (Perttula 2005:404-405): this tradition is marked by higher frequencies of plain wares than eastern ceramic tradition Titus phase sites, as well as punctated utility wares (although not in the Stouts Creek vessel assemblages), La Rue Neck Banded utility wares, abundant use of red-slipping on ne ware vessels, as well as several different varieties of Ripley Engraved and other ne wares, including Simms Engraved, Taylor Engraved, and Womack Engraved.Western tradition Titus phase sites occur in the middle and upper parts of the Big Cypress Creek basin, as well as in the upper Sabine and White Oak Creek basins (Figure 35).Western tradition sites tend also to have shell-tempered trade wares from McCurtain phase Caddo groups living to the north along the mid-reaches of the Red River in the Mound Prairie area (Figure 36).
The ceramic decorative category data discussed and tabulated by Perttula (2009:Table 25) points to close stylistic and cultural af liations between the Stouts Creek Titus phase sites and contemporaneous Titus phase sites in the Dry Creek locality in the Lake Fork Creek basin not far to the south (see Figure 35), as well as to other Titus phase communities within a 20-30 km radius to the north, south, and east-southeast.Even within these areas, however, there existed considerable local and intra-areal diversity in the character of the decorated utility ware and ne ware vessels made and used by different but socially interactive Titus phase communities.Sites in these areas share the considerable use of neck banded and appliqued utility wares, a minimal use of brushed utility wares, and the relative importance of red-slipped vessels (either plain red-slipped bowls and carinated bowls or engraved red-slipped carinated bowls).Downstream on White Oak Creek, the ceramic assemblage from the James Owens site (41TT769, Walters et al. 2003) also has considerable amounts of neck banded and appliqued utility ware sherds and red-slipped vessel sherds, but with moderate proportion of brushed jar sherds (see Perttula 2009:Table 25).Appliqued utility wares are important in Caney Creek locality Titus phase sites, but red-slipped sherds, neck banded sherds, and brushed pottery sherds are relatively negligible.Red-slipped vessel sherds are also an important part of Titus phase ceramic assemblages at the Pilgrim's Pride (41CP304) and Underwood (41CP230) sites in the western part of the Big Cypress Creek drainage.
In summary, the Culpepper site and other Titus phase sites along Stouts Creek (Tuinier Farm, Anglin, and R. A. Watkins sites) are part of a very distinctive western Titus phase community that lived in the Post Oak Savannah in the Stouts Creek valley in the late 16 th century and much of the 17 th century A.D. The stylistic character of the ceramic vessels from the Culpepper site suggest the cemetery there was used by Caddo peoples in the 17 th century, perhaps as late as ca.A.D. 1680, prior to any sustained contact between Caddo groups and European explorers and traders.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.The location of the Culpepper site (41HP1) in East Texas.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Sixteenth and seventeenth century Caddo sites on Stouts Creek in Hopkins County, Texas.
NUMBER: Culpepper VESSEL NO.: 1X, B. F. Perkins collection, purchased September 1930 VESSEL FORM: Bottle with a spool neck NON-PLASTICS AND PASTE: grog RIM AND LIP FORM: Everted to direct rim and rounded lip CORE COLOR: B ( red and cooled in a reducing environment) INTERIOR SURFACE COLOR: very dark grayish-brown EXTERIOR SURFACE COLOR: very dark grayish-brown WALL THICKNESS (IN MM): rim, 5.7 mm INTERIOR SURFACE TREATMENT: none EXTERIOR SURFACE TREATMENT: smoothed HEIGHT (IN CM): 12.7 ORIFICE DIAMETER (IN CM): 4.4 DIAMETER AT BOTTOM OF RIM OR NECK (IN CM): 4.6; maximum body diameter is 12.1 cm BASE DIAMETER (IN CM) AND SHAPE OF BASE: 7.2; circular and at ESTIMATED VOLUME (IN LITERS): 0.37 DECORATION (INCLUDING MOTIF AND ELEMENTS WHEN APPARENT): The top of the vessel body has three horizontal trailed lines.The remainder of the vessel has two sets of opposed semi-circular trailed lines on either side of four centrally located short horizontal trailed lines (Figure 4).At the upper end of the vessel body, dividing the opposed semi-circular trailed lines, are four sets of hatched triangular elements.PIGMENT USE AND LOCATION ON VESSEL: none TYPE AND VARIETY (IF KNOWN): Keno Trailed

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Decorative elements on a Keno Trailed bottle (Vessel 1X) from the Culpepper site.

Figure 35 .
Figure 35.Map of the Titus phase area, depicting the area with sites having the closest stylistic associations with the ceramic assemblages in the Stouts Creek locality.

Table 1 . Burial features at the Culpepper site.
S t o u t s C r e e kFigure3.Excavated burial features at the Culpepper site (afterScurlock 1962:Figure

Table 5 . Vessels recovered from other Stouts Creek archaeological sites (from Perttula 2009).
Figure36.The Stouts/Caney Creek areas in East Texas, showing relevant protohistoric and Historic Caddo sites and archaeological phases, as well as the general location of some villages and trails mentioned in historic documents and maps.