The Caddo Occupation of the L. B. Miller Farm (41HE4/55) in the Post Oak Savanna and Trinity River Basin in East Texas

The L. B. Miller Farm site (41HE4/55) is a Late Caddo period Frankston phase Caddo habitation site and small cemetery on an upland landform (400 ft. amsl) in the Coon Creek-Catfish Creek drainage in the Post Oak Savannah of the Trinity River basin. The ancestral Caddo artifact collections from the site at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin (TARL) include four vessels from a burial feature, sherds from two unreconstructed ceramic jars found in habitation contexts, and 178 ceramic sherds from midden deposits.


Introduction
The L. B. Miller Farm site (41HE4/55) is a Late Caddo period Frankston phase Caddo habitation site and small emeter on an pland land orm (4 t. amsl) in the Coon Creek Cat sh Creek draina e in the Post Oak Savannah of the Trinity River basin (Figure 1). The ancestral Caddo artifact collections from the site at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin (TARL) include four vessels from a burial feature, sherds from two unreconstructed ceramic jars found in habitation contexts, and 178 ceramic sherds from midden deposits.

and 1934 Investigations
Caddo ceramic vessels from a burial in an unmarked cemetery were exposed in a gully in 1920 on the L. B. Miller Farm, where they were collected by the landowner's son. These four vessels were obtained by J. E. Pearce of the University of Texas (UT) on long-term loan that year. In November 1935, UT archaeologists led by A. M. Woolsey returned to the site to try to locate and excavate additional Caddo burial features (Woolsey 1935). An area at least 20 ft. in each direction from the 1920 burial feature location was excavated by UT, but no other burial features were located.
UT archaeologists also excavated another place on the site an unknown distance southwest of the burial feature, in an area that apparently had midden deposits (Woolsey 1935). This area had sherds from two different unreconstructed ceramic jars as well as a number of sherds from unrelated plain ware, ne ware, and utility ware vessels.

Ceramic Vessels
The four vessels from the ancestral Caddo burial feature exposed in 1920 at the L.  The 178 other sherds from the midden deposits at the L. B. Miller Farm site include sherds from plain ware, ne ware, and utility ware vessels (Table 1). No information on the temper of these wares was provided on the TARL inventory, but it is likely that the majority of the sherds were from vessels tempered with grog, as is the case in the nearby Caddo Creek valley in the upper Neches River basin (Perttula and Walters 2016). The plain to decorated sherd ratio of the L. B. Miller Farm site ceramic assemblage is 1.54. Approximately 51.4 percent of the decorated sherds have brushed decorative elements, while 40 percent have wet paste decorations (i.e., incised, incised-punctated). The brushed/wet paste ratio in the sherd assemblage is 1.29. These assemblage metrics in the midden deposits at the site are consistent with a ca. A.D. 1400-1480 Frankston phase occupation (see Perttula and Walters 2016).
Fine ware sherds in the assemblage only account for 10 percent of the decorated sherds (see Table 1). None of them were described or typologically identi ed on the TARL inventory. The utility wares include 35 brushed body sherds and one brushed-incised body sherd, both likely from Bullard Brushed jars; 19 punctated sherds; two incised-punctated sherds likely from Maydelle Incised jars; and six Maydelle Incised rim and body sherds;

Summary and Conclusions
The L. B. Miller Farm site (41HE4/55) is an ancestral Caddo habitation site and cemetery of unknown size on Coon Creek in the Post Oak Savannah in the Trinity River basin in East Texas. UT archaeologists rst investigated the site in 1920, when the landowners loaned them four ceramic vessels that had been eroded from a burial feature, and then again in 1935, when excavations failed to identify any additional Caddo burial features but did identify midden deposits with sherds from two large, but unreconstructed ceramic jars as well as 178 other ceramic sherds.
The analysis of the ceramic vessels and an examination of an 1985 TARL inventory of the sherds indicates that the L. B. Miller Farm site was occupied during the Frankston phase of the Late Caddo period; the vast majority of known Frankston phases are in the Neches River basin, and there is a particular concentration of Frankston phase sites in the adjoining Caddo Creek valley in the upper Neches River basin (Perttula and Walters 2016). Ceramic plain and decorated sherd metrics suggest that the midden deposits may have accumulated during the early part of the Frankston phase, from ca. A.D. 1400-1480. The temporal sequence of Poynor Engraved varieties and other engraved ne wares in the upper Neches River basin (see Perttula 2011: Table 6-37) when compared to the few ceramic vessels from the burial feature suggest the deceased at the L. B. Miller Farm site was interred in the later part of the Frankston phase, from ca. A.D. 1560-1680.