Documentation of Late Caddo Period Ceramic Vessels from Sites in the Lake Fork Creek Basin in Wood County, Texas

Repository Citation Perttula, Timothy K. and Skiles, Bob D. (2014) "Documentation of Late Caddo Period Ceramic Vessels from Sites in the Lake Fork Creek Basin in Wood County, Texas," Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State: Vol. 2014 , Article 25. https://doi.org/ 10.21112/.ita.2014.1.25 ISSN: 2475-9333 Available at: https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ita/vol2014/iss1/25


INTRODUCTION
In this article we document 18 ceramic vessels from three ancestral Caddo sites with cemeteries in the Lake Fork Creek basin in Wood County, Texas. Each site has a Late Caddo period Titus phase (ca. A.D. 1430-1680) component.

BURKS SITE (41WD52) VESSEL
The Burks site is a Titus phase hamlet in the Little Dry Creek drainage basin (see Perttula et al. 1993:Figure 4) in the East Texas Pineywoods. In addition to a number of midden deposits at the site that may represent household clusters, there is an associated cemetery at the southern end of the site (Perttula 2005: Figure  10). A single ancestral Caddo burial feature was excavated in 1978, and the interment was associated with a single smoothed pebble and eight ceramic vessels lying between 49-56 cm bs (Perttula 2005: Figure 11). One of the eight vessels in this burial is documented in this article.

HOLLY LAKE RANCH (41WD57) VESSEL
The Holly Lake Ranch site is on Honey Creek in the Big Sandy Creek basin (Perttula et al. 1986:58 and Figure 9). A single vessel is documented from a burial at the site.

GOLDSMITH (41WD208) VESSELS
The Goldsmith site is a late (ca. post-A.D. 1550) Titus phase habitation site and cemetery on Dry Creek in the Lake Fork Creek basin (Perttula et al. 1993:139 and Figure 4). Two ancestral Caddo burials were excavated from the site in 1985 before the area could be disturbed by ongoing pothunting activities. Burial 1 contained seven ceramic vessels (Perttula et al. 1993:Figure 8) and Burial 2 had nine ceramic vessels as funerary offerings (Perttula 1993:         The rim has a single smoothed over neck banded coil followed by four shallow horizontal grooved areas (Figure 16). There are also four equally-spaced appliqued nodes on the neck banded coil at the top of the rim. The vessel body has four vertical appliqued ridges that extend from the rim-body juncture down the vessel; these ridges are aligned with the appliqued nodes on the rim. Between these vertical appliqued ridges are four large appliqued triangles pendant from the rim-body juncture (Figure 16). These appliqued triangle elements are lled with both short vertical and diagonal appliqued ridge elements.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The 18 vessels documented from the Burks (41WD52), Holly Lake Ranch (41WD57), and the Goldsmith site (41WD208) are from four different Late Caddo period Titus phase burials in cemeteries in the Lake Fork Creek basin in Wood County. The majority of the vessels are ne ware carinated bowls (n=10, 56 percent of the sample) and bottles (n=3, 17 percent of the documented vessels), but decorated utility wares (n=5, 28 percent of the documented vessels) are also present in these vessel assemblages. The vessels are uniformly tempered with grog (one of the vessels has grog and bone temper) and they had been red in a reducing environment; the majority of the vessels were removed from the re and then cooled in the open air.
The principal ne wares in the carinated bowls are represented by several varieties of Ripley Engraved, including cf. var. Cash (n=1), cf. var. Carpenter (n=1), var. Williams (n=1), var. Pilgrims (n=1), var. Galt (n=4), and var. unspeci ed (n=1). One ne ware carinated bowl is decorated only on its interior surface by a single horizontal engraved line at the carination. Fine ware bottles include Wilder Engraved, var. Wilder (n=2) and Taylor Engraved (n=1). Clay pigments were commonly added to the engraved designs on these ne wares, including 80 percent of the carinated bowls and 33 percent of the bottles. A red clay (hematiterich) pigment occurs on 38 percent of the ne wares and a white clay (kaolin-rich) pigment occurs on 31 percent of the ne wares.
The utility wares in this collection are jars. They are represented by La Rue Neck Banded vessels (n=4) and a single cf. Maydelle Incised vessel. None of the jars have sturdy handles, but several have small pseudolug handles as well as four rim peaks.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We appreciate the drawings prepared by Lance Trask of the decorative elements and motifs on selected vessels illustrated in this article.