The De Rossett Farm (41HE75) and Quate Place (41HE81) Sites in The De Rossett Farm (41HE75) and Quate Place (41HE81) Sites in the Cobb Creek Valley in the Upper Neches River Basin, the Cobb Creek Valley in the Upper Neches River Basin, Henderson County, Texas Henderson County, Texas

The De Rossett Farm and Quate Place sites were among the earliest East Texas archaeological sites to be investigated by professional archaeologists at The University of Texas (UT), which began under the direction of Dr. J. E. Pearce between 1918-1920


Introduction
The De Rossett Farm and Quate Place sites were among the earliest East Texas archaeological sites to be investigated by professional archaeologists at The University of Texas (UT), which began under the direction of Dr. J. E. Pearce between 1918Pearce between -1920 (Pearce 1920a(Pearce , 1920b(Pearce , 1932a(Pearce , 1932b(Pearce , and 1932c)).According to Pearce (1932c:51), UT began work in this part of the state under the auspices of the Bureau of American Ethnology, and that work had led me to suppose that should nd this part of the tate rich in archeological material of a high order." The two sites were investigated in August 1920.They are on Cobb Creek, a small and eastwardowing tributary to the eches River (Figure 1), nor far to the northeast of the town of Frankston, Texas (Pearce 1920a); the sites are across the valley from each other.The De Rossett Farm site is on an upland slope on the north side of the valley, while the Quate Place site is on an upland slope on the south side of the Cobb Creek valley, about 2 km west of the Neches River, and slightly southeast from the De Rossett Farm.Both sites have domestic Caddo archaeological deposits, and there was an ancestral Caddo cemetery of an unknown extent and character at the De Rossett Farm.

Archaeological Investigations at the De Rossett Farm (41HE75)
The site had been discovered around 1914-1915 during road construction.Plowing of the road ditch had exposed numerous ceramic vessels.Some time prior to 1920, perhaps in 1919, a Judge A. B. Watkins from Athens, Texas, excavated these Caddo ceramic vessels, and also recovered two ceramic pipes, and a large chipped stone knive; the pipes had apparently been found in two separate burials, placed near the chest and hip of the deceased.These artifacts were purchased by Pearce in 1920, and are in the collections of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory, The University of Texas at Austin.
In August 1920, Pearce, with the assistance of George Engerrand, also carried out excavations in the cemetery area at the De Rossett Farm.These excavations consisted of trenches that were 3 ft.deep and spaced 15 ft.apart across the cemetery.During that work, ceramic vessels, two ceramic pipes, two arrow points and a chipped stone knive, two conch shell fragments (one with its end ground to a point), and a small piece of hammered lead were recovered from an unknown number of burial features.It appears that 12 specimens from this cemetery excavation were sent to the U.S. National Museum (the precursor to the National Museum of Natural History [NMNH] at the Smithsonian Institution) because of the fact that funds used in the UT excavations had been furnished by Dr. J. W. Fewkes of the Bureau of American Ethnology.The current provenance of these material remains is not known with any certainty, and there are no De Rossett Farm collections listed for Henderson County in the NMNH records (Dorothy Lippert, personal communication, September 28, 2015).

Ceramic Vessels
There are nine ceramic vessels from the De Rossett Farm site that came from the Judge A. B. Watkins collection.They include bottles (n=2), bowls (n=3), jars (n=1), compound bowls (n=1), and carinated bowls (n=2); all of the vessels are grog-tempered.The decorated methods and elements on the vessels indicate that they came from Frankston phase burial features.Immediately below the neck are a series of excised pendant triangles above a single horizontal engraved line (Figure 6).Pendant from this engraved line are a series of four large, open pendant triangles with their apexes pointing towards the vessel base, and as a counterpoint to this engraved element are a series of another four much larger engraved pendant triangles whose apexes point towards the bottle neck.These large engraved pendant triangles have a series of three nested triangles marked by either short horizontal or diagonal hatched lines (Figure 6).
These upper and lower large pendant triangle elements divide the vessel body into four panels.The panels each have a series of concentric circles, with a small central circle element (Figure 6).

Ceramic Pipe
The one complete ceramic pipe in the TARL collections from the De Rossett Farm site is an elbow pipe with a ring pedestal base (Figure 7).The pipe has a deep bowl and a lengthy stem: its height, including the pedestal, is 53.0 mm; its height without the pedestal base is 36.0mm.The length of the pipe is 80.2 mm, the ori ce diameter of the bowl is 48.8 mm, the stem s ori ce diameter is 23.5 mm, and the thickness of the stem (with its at lip) is 5.6 mm.Jackson (1933:Plate 17:47) illustrates the unreconstructed De Rossett Farm pipe, without the attached ring pedestal base, and suggests the pipe had attachments below the lip for handles.A similar ring pedestal base elbow pipe has been recovered from 41CE3 in the upper Neches River basin (Perttula 2011:Figure 6-24a).
The De Rossett Farm elbow pipe has three horizontal engraved lines below the stem lip, and the remainder of the stem is covered with four horizontal rows of small tool punctations; these punctated rows do not continue onto the bowl (see Figure 7).However, there are two diagonal rows of tool punctations that extend from the distal part of the stem along the lowermost part of the bowl, and there are also four vertical rows of tool punctations on the bowl, extending from just below the bowl lip to the base of the bowl; the ring pedestal base is plain (see Figure 7).

Lead Artifact
One piece of lead was recovered during the Pearce excavations in the cemetery at the De Rossett Farm site.This is a small hammered piece of lead that measured 16 x 18 x 2.2 mm in length, width, and thickness.If this piece of lead is directly associated with the burial features at the site, it would suggest that one burial feature almost certainly dates after ca.A.D. 1680, and would be of Historic Caddo age.

Midden Excavations
According to Pearce (1920a), a eld next to the cemetery area was almost covered in places with shard [sherds]."In fact, there was a midden mound ca. 100 m from the cemetery, and Pearce excavated a trench through its center.In this work, he noted many ceramic sherds, as well as bones of deer, squirrel, and turtle, as well as mussel shell pieces.

Ceramic Sherds
Ceramic sherds from the midden excavations at the De Rossett Farm in the TARL collections include 15 plain ware sherds, 23 ne ware sherds, and 14 utility ware sherds; they are from grog-tempered (96 percent) and bone-tempered (4 percent) vessels.A 1980s TARL inventory, however, lists 76 plain rim, body, and base sherds, 53 utility ware sherds, and 13 ne ware sherds from the site; this inventory suggests that the plain to decorated sherd ratio in the assemblage is 1.15.Brushed sherds comprise 51 percent of the decorated sherds (and 64 percent of the utility wares).
The ne ware sherds from the De Rossett Farm site include two exterior red-slipped sherds and 21 sherds from engraved carinated bowls and bottles (Table 1).The engraved rim sherds in the assemblage have a cross-hatched engraved zone element (Figure 8a), horizontal and diagonal lines (Figure 8b), diagonal lines that are part of a Poynor Engraved vessel with a slanting scroll motif, and horizontal engraved lines.One distinctive rim sherd has engraved and excised punctated elements (Figure 8c).Another body sherd in the assemblage has both engraved and excised punctated elements (see Figure 8d), with the excised punctations in a curvilinear engraved zone.Other engraved body sherds from Poynor Engraved vessels have a vertical hatched zone (see Figure 8e) and curvilinear and opposed engraved lines (see Figure 8f).There is also one bone-tempered carinated bowl Poynor Engraved, var.B sherd that has horizontal and vertical interlocking scroll elements (see Figure 8g).A proposed temporal sequence of Poynor Engraved varieties in the upper Neches River basin (see Perttula 2011:Table 6-37) suggests that var.B vessels occur only in early Frankston phase contexts, from ca.A.D. 1400-1480.
Among the utility wares in the TARL collection, there are: Bullard Brushed (n=5), incised (n=2, including a strap handle sherd with vertical incised lines on the handle), tool punctated (n=1), and six La Rue Neck Banded rim and body sherds.These utility wares are indicative of a Frankston phase creation and use of the midden deposits at the site.Also among the sherds from the midden excavations at the site is a single plain elbow pipe bowl rim sherd.It is from a grog-tempered pipe.

The Archaeology of the Quate Place (41HE81)
Prior to completing the investigations at the De Rossett Farm, Pearce had conducted excavations in May 1920 at the Quate Place.There, Pearce had identi ed three distinct midden mounds, two about 200 m apart, and a third midden mound about 800 m from the other two.At least two of the midden mounds were trenched with 3 ft.wide and 2 ft.deep excavations across them.The largest of the midden mounds was 75 ft. in length, 25 ft. in width, and 2 ft. in height, and a second midden was 30 ft. in length, 10 ft. in width, and 0.7 ft. in height.Pearce described the larger midden as a "kitchen midden" with large amounts of animal bone, mussel shell, ceramic sherds, and ash.
There are 90 ceramic vessel sherds in the TARL collections from the Quate Place site.They include plain ware sherds (n=19), ne ware sherds (n=3), and utility ware sherds (n=68).All of the sherds are from grog-tempered vessels.The plain to decorated sherd ratio in this small assemblage is 0.27, along with the proportion of brushed sherds in the assemblage (see below), suggesting a Caddo occupation took place at the site in the latter part of the Frankston phase, between ca.A.D. 1560-1680.
Only 4.2 percent of the decorated sherds at the site are from ne ware vessels (Table 2).One of the sherds is from a bottle, and the other two are from Poynor Engraved, var.n d carinated bowls (Figure 9a-b).One of the carinated bowl sherds has a horizontal and diagonal engraved element on the rim panel, with a small excised triangle on the diagonal line, and vertical brushing marks on the vessel body (Figure 9b).In addition to the ceramic sherds recovered from the site, there were a ceramic pipe sherd, two arrow points (Perdiz and Scallorn-like), two scraping tools, and a celt fragment made from a Ouachita Mountains igneous rock.There were also bone tools-a deer ulna tool and a deer antler billet-and animal bones; these were from deer, turtle, opossum, turkey, and gar.Mussel shell valves were also recovered in the midden excavations.

Summary and Conclusions
The De Rossett Farm and Quate Place sites are ancestral Caddo sites in the Cobb Creek valley, a small eastward-owing tributary to the Neches River in the East Texas Post Oak Savannah.Both sites were investigated by Dr. J. E. Pearce of UT in 1920, and are among the rst sites investigated by professional archaeologists in the state of Texas.The De Rossett Farm site was a Caddo settlement and cemetery of unknown size, but the number of ceramic vessels recovered by Judge A. B. Watkins in 1919 and Pearce in 1920 suggests that at least four burials were excavated at the site.The settlement was marked by midden mound deposits with apparently a dense concentration of ceramic sherds and animal bones, only a few of which were recovered and retained in the UT collections.The range of artifacts from both the midden and the small cemetery, including one distinctive ring base elbow pipe, indicate that the De Rossett Farm site was occupied by Caddo peoples during Late Caddo period, Frankston phase times.The occurrence of Poynor Engraved, var.Hood carinated bowls and Hood Engraved bowls suggest that the burials were interred between ca.A.D. 1480-1560, while the midden deposits may have accumulated somewhat earlier, perhaps between ca.A.D. 1400-1480.The one piece of lead supposedly found in the burial excavations does not appear to have been in archaeological association with them, as there is no indication in the recovered funerary offerings to suggest they date from the time of European contact after the late 17 th century.
The Quate Place was an ancestral Caddo settlement with two or three midden mound deposits along the southern side of the Cobb Creek valley; dart points recovered there also indicate the site area was used during Woodland and Late Archaic times.The recovered ne ware and utility wares from the midden mounds at the Quate Place suggest that the Caddo occupation took place at the site in the latter part of the Frankston phase, between ca.A.D. 1560-1680.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Location of the De Rossett Farm and Quate Place sites in East Texas.SITE NAME OR SITE NUMBER: De Rossett Farm
PIGMENT USE AND LOCATION ON VESSEL: none TYPE AND VARIETY (IF KNOWN): Poynor Engraved, var.n d Figure 6.Poynor Engraved, var.n d bottle (No. 22) from the De Rossett Farm site.

Figure 7 .
Figure 7. Incised-punctated elbow pipe from the De Rossett Farm site.

Figure 8 .
Figure 8. Selected decorative elements on engraved and engraved-punctated sherds in the ne wares from the De Rossett Farm sherd assemblage.
Lastly, one Gary dart point and one Yarbrough dart point are in the collections from the Quate Place.They indicate use of the site likely during Woodland (ca.500 B.C.-A.D. 800) and Late Archaic (ca.3000-500 B.C.) times.

Figure 9 .
Figure 9. Decorative elements on selected engraved sherds from the Quate Place site.