Prehistoric Caddo Ceramics from the Henry Lake Site (41CE324), Cherokee County, Texas

This article discusses the character of the Caddo ceramics from a single component Frankston phase (ca. A.D. 1400-1650) occupation at the Henry Lake site (41CE324) in northwestern Cherokee County, Texas. This follows a brief discussion of the history of the site, and we conclude this article with a consideration of the temporal and cultural place of the site's Caddo ceramic assemblage within the upper Neches River basin.


Prehistoric Caddo Ceran1ics from the Henry Lake Site (41CE324), Cherokee County, Texas
Timoth. y K. Perttul.a and Tum Middlebrook INTRODlJCTION This article discusses the character of the Caddo ceramics from a single component Frankston phase (ca. A.D. 1400-1650) occupation at the Henry Lake site (41CE324) in northwestern Cherokee County, Texas. This follows a brief discussion of the history of the site, and we conclude this article with a consideration of the temporal and cultural place of the site's Caddo ceramic assemblage within the upper Neches River basin.

Discovery of the Site
A Mr. Joe Doh Staton of Jacksonville, Texas, discovered the Henry Lake site in June 1995 during the course of constructing a road on his property that ran from Cary Lake to Henry Lake, paralleling the Neches River floodplain. Caddo ceramic sherds were noted and collected hy Mr. Staton's crew in the roadway (Swanson and Middlebrook 1996). Mr. Staton contacted the chairman of the Cherokee County Historical Commission, John Allen Templeton, about the find, who subsequently notified the Office of the State Archeologist at the Texas Historical Commission. In July 1995, Gladys Swanson and Tom Middlebrook. both Stewards of the Texas Archeological Stewardship Network, visited the site with Mr. Staton, obtained a surface collection of archaeological materials (primarily Caddo ceramics, but also 14 pieces of lithic debris, five small pieces of animal bones, and five pieces of mussel shell), and officially recordeu the site. There have been no archaeological investigations at the from the site were examined in detail as part of the on-going analysis of Frankston and Allen phase ceramic assemblages in the upper Neches River basin (see Peruula 2008).
The Henry Lake site is on a wooded lower toe slope (300 ft. amsl) or natural rise landform, overlooking the Neches River floodplain about 1.25 km east of the cunent channel of the Neches River; it is ca. 11 km south of the Lake Palestine dam. The overall extent of the Henry Lake site is estimated at I 00 x 7 5 m, or 1.85 acres.
There are steep uplands and small mountains paralleling the river floodplain, and these crest at 450ft. amsl atop Cary Lake Mountain, not far south of the site. This area is part of the Boggy Creek salt dome. and the broad floodplain here is marked by several relict channels of the Neches River, including Cary Lake and Henry Lake; this natural lake is ca. 320 m northwest of the site.

The Henry Lake Site Ceramic Assemblage
The Henry Lake site Caddo ceramic assemblage consists of 279 sherds, 188 (68 percent) of which 0 5 Henry Lake site since July 1995. In early 2008, the Caddo ceramics have a decorated exterior surface, and the other 91 sherds are undecorated or plain (Appendix 1). The plain shen.ls include four rims (Figure 1 a-b), one bottle neck, 79 hody sherds. and seven base sherds. The plain/decorated sherd ratio (P/DR) is a low o.4g. The decorated shcrds from Henry Lake are dominated by utility wares, coarsely-tempered and relatively thick vessels that were used for cooking and storage tasks. These utility ware vessels were decorated prior to their being fired (i.e., wet paste decorations). Utility ware decorated sherds comprise 89.4% of the decorated sherd assemblage ( Table 1 ), but only 41.7% of the rims. Vessel shcrds from decorated fine wares (i.e., thin, well-fired, and tinely-tempered, with engraved decorations) account for I 0.6% of the Henry Lake sherds, but sg.3% of the rims. This disparity in the proportions of total number of utility ware vs. fine ware sherds and the proportions of utility ware and tine ware rims is typical of Late Caddo ceramic assemblages. Late Caddo utility ware vessels are relatively large in size and decorated surface area, and tend to be decorated on hoth the rim and much of the body (but not always with the same decorative method), and when they are fragmented. they produ,·\.· sherd assemblages with high ratios of decorated utility ware body sherds to decorated rim sherds (30.6: I at Henry Lake). The overall smaller fine ware vessels lend to be decorated only on the rim (including the lower part of the rim, here characterized as a body sherd because the lip and much of the upper part of the rim is missing), and decorated body to rim sherd rutios are correspondingly lower ( 1. 9: l ).
More specific decorative clements are recognized within ea~.:h of the broad decorative method categories in the Henry Lake ceramic assemblage ( Table 2). Starting with the utility wares. with the incised shcrds. the decorative clements are simple straight and geometric designs t Figure       motif (see below). Brushed-incised decorations at the Henry Lake site appear to be confined only to the body of utility ware vessels. In the ca:,e of the brushed-punctated sherds, they are from Bullard Brushed vessels (see Suhm and Jelks l962:Piate 11 a-b) with horizontal or vertical brushing marks on the vessel body and at least one row of tool punctations on the rim, beginning at the rim-body juncture (Table 2).
Tool and fingernail punctated shcrds appear to be from vessels where rows of punctations covered the vessel body (see Table 2). but it is likely the case that rows of punctations occur on vessel rims as well, either as the sole decoration (Figure 5b-d (Figures 6a. c and 7a).
The Caddo ceramics from the Henry Lake site are almost exclusively tempered with grog (99% ), namely crushed sherds and pieces of fired clay. Some 22.1% of the sherJs also have pieces of crushc.d hematite or ferruginous sandstone that have been added to the paste, and another 3.2% have burned bone temper (see Appendix I). The vessels from the site typically have a clay or silty paste, and only 6.3% of the sherds (primarily from plain body sherds or hrushed vessel shcrds) are from vessels with a sandy paste; these sherds likely came from vessels made with a naturally sandy clay. Another four sherds ( 4.2% of the detailed sherd sample) have a notable reddish-pink paste color, dubbed "pinkware" in the 41 AN38 ceramic analysis; "pink ware" has been identified in a few other upper Neches River basin sites {Shawn Marceaux, personal communication, 2008). These particular "pinkware" sherds-three brushed sherds and a plain rim from the Henry Lake site-must be from vessels made from a distinctive but localiz.ed upper Neches River basin clay source.
The Henry Lake ceramic sherds are from vessels fired primarily in a reducing or low oxygen environment, particularly the fine wares (92.8% ). Among the plain sherds, 75% were fired in this manner, compared to 64.2% of the decorated utility wares (see Appendix 1). The utility ware  sherds were from vessels that were also commonly fired in a high oxygen or oxidizing environment (9.4%) or were incompletely oxidized during tiring (26.4% ). Many of the plain and decorated shcrds from the Henry Lake site have smooth~d or burnished interior and/or exterior vessel surfaces (see Appendix 1}. In part, this is likely the product of th~ context in which the sherds had accumulated-a midden deposit that would have lessened the degradation of the surface condition of buried sherds-as well as the fact that most fine wares have interior and exterior smoothed or burnished surfaces and many of the utility ware vessels were smoothed on their interior vessel surfaces.

UPPER NECHES IU VER BASfN CERAMIC TRADITIONS
The Henry Lake site ceramics arc from a Late Caddo Frankston phase (ca. A.D. 1400-1650) occupation. They include several varieties of Poynor Engraved, the principal fine ware of the Frankston phase (Suhm and Jelks 1962: 123}, a Hood Engraved or effigy vessel sherd, and sherds from several vessels of Maydelle lncised, Bullard Brushed, and Killough Pinched (see Table 2).
How does the decorated sherd assemblage from the Henry Lake site compare with other upper Neches River basin Caddo sites, and can that comparison provide more specific hints about when the site was occupied within the 250 year span of the Frankston phase? Comparisons of the composition of upper Neche~ River basin Caddo decorated sherd assemblages-and the temporal orderings and cultural affiliations they imply-are based on a mix of stylistiL: and technological attributes. These attributes include the percentage of brushed sherds in the decorated sherd sample from each site. the percentage of bone temper in the assemblages, the percentage of wet-paste decorations other than brushing (i. e., incised. punctated. appliqued, neckbanded, etc.). the plain/decorated sherd ratio (P/DR). and the brushed sherd/wet paste decorated sherd ratio (Table 3 ).
From these comparisons. five different groups of assemblages have been detlncd in a seriation of Lake Palestine sites (Anderson et al. 1974;Gilmore 1983) as well as other nearby and recently studied Caddo sites (i.e., 41 AN3R and 41 CE354) with large decorated sherd ceramic assemblages (Perttula and Nelson 2007;Pertlula et al. 2007) (see Table 3}. These five groups seem to reflect temporal changes due to the high frequency of Late Caddo Frankston phase decorated types. such as Poynor Engraved, Maydelle Incised. Bullard Brushed, Hume Engraved, and engraved effigy vessels, that are found in the Groups I-lll sites-which includes the Henry Lake site-and the occurrence of Early and Middle Caddo types such a~ Canton Incised, Dunkin Incised. Holly Fine Engraved, Pennington Punetated-Inciscd in the Group IV and V sites; no Sanders phase pottery types (i.e., Sanders Engraved, Monkstown Fingernail Impressed, Maxey Noded Redware) were recovered in any of these sites. Furthermore, it has been shown in several other ceramic studies in northeastern Texas that the proportion of brushed sherds in decorated sherd assemblages steadily increases through time, beginning after ca. A.D. 1250 (and after the principal Early Caddo occupation at the George C. Davis site), and by the late 17th and early 18th centuries Caddo sites are known in the Neches and Angelina river basins where brushed sherds account for more than 50% and as much as 90% of all the decorated pottery.
Of note is the generally low usc of bone-tempered pottery in upper Neches River basin Caddo pottery in each of the five site/assemblage groupings (see Table 3). The tradition of manufacturing grog-tempered vessels is a strong and long-lasting one in this region, and the ceramic assemblage from the Henry Lake site is certainly part of that same tradition.
If the sherd assemblage data from the Lake Palestine area sites have chronological significance, and it is suspected they do given the discussion above regarding the kinds of engraved fine wares that arc present at each of the sites as well a~ the changing proportions of brushed pottery (see Table  3 ), then it is possible to seriate the decorated ceramic shcrd assemblage from the Henry Lake site, anti establish its age. Key in thi s respect is the very high proportion of brushed pottery (81.9%) in the Henry Lake site ceramic assemblage (see Table  3). This points to the likelihood that the Cadtlo occupation at Henry Lake was one of the youngest components in the Group I Frankston phase sites. The absence of any Patton Engraved pottery. the principal fine ware in post- A.D. 1650 Allen phase sites in the upper Neches Rive basin. in the engraved fine wares from the Henry Lake site, may provide an upper limit to the age of the Caddo occupation here; Pallon Engraved pottery is present, and relatively abundant, only in the youngest Group I site: 41 CE354 (Perttula and Nelson 2007). Taken together. the very high proportions of hrushed utility wares al the Henry Lake site, the dominance of Poynor Engraved sherds in the fine wares, and the absence of post-A. D. 1650 Patton Engraved sherds. suggest that this Caddo occupation probably took place from ca. A.D. 1600-1650, near the end of the Frankston phase, well prior to any sustained contact between the upper Neches River basin Caddo groups and Europeans.