History of the East Texas Caddoan/Caddo Research Group, 1996-2008

Recently, the senior author of this article has been working with Hester Davis (Arkansas Archeological Survey) regarding the editing of her manuscript on the history of the Caddo Conference, which had its 50th meeting in March 2008. In her manuscript she laments the fact that there is very little time being spent by its participants in keeping track of its history: either in the form of transcripts of the meetings, notes on each conference, saving photographs and images, or actively maintaining an archive of materials resulting from each Conference. Davis pointed out that it was important to maintain a record of each Conference, and take steps to do a better job in preserving for others that record for present and future Caddo Conference participants and researchers. Hester’s points, which we agree with, led directly to our discussing the need to put on record a history, as best we can recall it, of the East Texas Caddoan/Caddo Research Group. This informal group has met a number of times since 1996, with the purpose of advancing the general understanding of Caddo archaeology in the East Texas region. The meetings have been held to discuss pertinent and current problems and research issues concerning East Texas Caddo archaeology. As we recall, the East Texas Caddoan [now Caddo] Research Group (ETCRG) developed out of discussions between Perttula and Middlebrook in January 1996. Middlebrook’s own interests in the idea had been piqued by reading the obituary of Fred Plog in the October 1995 American Antiquity that described his founding of the Southwestern Anthropological Research Group, the success that group had in working together on common research problems, and in working together to improve understandings of the prehistory of the American Southwest. This seemed to both of us like an idea worth emulating for the Caddo archaeological area, or at least the East Texas part of the area since we were more familiar with this region’s archaeology and the archaeologists working in that area.


INTRODUCTION
Recently, the senior author of this article has been working with Hester Davis (Arkansas Archeological Survey) regarding the editing of her manuscript on the history of the Caddo Conference (Davis and Davis 2009), which had its 50th meeting in March 2008(Lee 2008. In her manuscript she laments the fact that there is very little time being spent by its participants in keeping track of its history: either in the form of transcripts of the meetings, notes on each conference, saving photographs and images, or actively maintaining an archive of materials resulting from each Conference. Davis pointed out that it was important to maintain a record of each Conference, and take steps to do a better job in preserving for others that record for present and future Caddo Conference participants and researchers.
Hester's points, which we agree with, led directly to our discussing the need to put on record a history, as best we can recall it, of the East Texas Caddoan/Caddo Research Group. This informal group has met a number of times since 1996, with the purpose of advancing the general understanding of Caddo archaeology in the East Texas region. The meetings have been held to discuss pertinent and current problems and research issues concerning East Texas Caddo archaeology.
As we recall , the East Texas Caddoan [now Caddo] Research Group (ETCRG) developed out of discussions between Perttula and Middlebrook in January 1996. Middlebrook's own interests in the idea had been piqued by reading the obituary of Fred Plog in the October 1995 American Antiquity (Vol. 60,No. 4,p. 679) that described his founding of the Southwestern Anthropological Research Group, the success that group had in working together on common research problems, and in working together to improve understandings of the prehistory of the American Southwest. This seemed to both of us like an idea worth emulating for the Caddo archaeological area, or at least the East Texas part of the area since we were more familiar with this region's archaeology and the archaeologists working in that area.
After a phone conversation discussing the possibility of starting a research group, Perttula jotted Middlebrook this note on January 23, 1996: 5 The purpose of the meeting will be to advance East Texas Caddoan studies through encouragement of re-evaluating and organizing existing data into testable models of cultural patterns (e.g., socio-political organization, trade interactions, etc.). New terminologies related to cultural history and artifact typology should not be avoided but encouraged if they are understood to be tentative and directed toward theory building. Just as important as the above is the encouragement of new research deepening old data in areas of chronology (e.g., radiocarbon dating), subsistence, etc. The Research Group should serve as a sounding board for developing ideas ...

Tom
Perttula subsequently drafted a letter of invitation to the first group of about 18 individuals encouraging their participation in the research group.

MEETINGS OF THE EAST TEXAS CADDO RESEARCH GROUP (ETCRG)
The ETCRG has met eight times between 1996 and 2008. In the remainder of this article, we provide a brief summary of the various meetings.
The first meeting of the ETCRG was held over lunch at a Natchitoches, Louisiana, restaurant on March 30, 1996, during the 38th Caddo Conference.
We brainstormed about the organization of the group while feasting on meat pies and crawfish. No specific research topic for the group to focus on was discussed at the meeting. We did not maintain a list of attendees of this meeting, but remember that Bob Turner, at least, joined us at the lunch.
One of our most productive meetings was the second session of the ETCRG held on Sunday morning, October 27, 1996, at the Annual Meeting of the Texas Archeological Society in San Antonio, Texas. The meeting was well attended, but again we do not have a list of attendees. Dee Ann Story and Cecile Carter were major respondents to the presentations, however. A tape was made of the proceedings, but the audio quality was very poor, and consequently it has not been fully transcribed and/or published; a partial transcript has been typed but not published. The meeting considered the character of the Middle Caddo archaeological record of East Texas in its broadest geographical sense-occasioned at least in part by current research in the region, most especially the recent excavations at the Oak Hill Village site in Rusk County, Texas (see Rogers and Perttula 2004)-by reviewing major research findings along specific thematic lines (settlement, subsistence, dating, mounds, mortuary practices, ceramic traits, etc.) in each of several river basins. Summary handouts were prepared by the presenters: Maynard Cliff (lower Sulphur River Basin), Bo Nelson and Mike Turner (Big Cypress Creek Basin), Tim Perttula and Brett Cruse (the upper and middle Sabine River basin), Tim Perttula (middle Red River and upper Sulphur River basins), and Tom Middlebrook (Angelina and Attoyac River basins). Jim Corbin (Washington Square Mound Site) and Bob Turner (three Middle Caddo cemeteries in Camp and Upshur counties) discussed specific Middle Caddo sites in the region. An summary of the meeting was prepared by Middlebrook and Perttula (1997:1-8) in Volume 9/1997 of the Journal ofNortheastTexas Archaeology, along with two articles on the Middle Caddo period archaeology in the lower Sulphur and Sabine River basins (see Appendix). Five additional articles appeared in Volume 1011997 of the Journal of Northeast Texas Archaeology related to this second meeting of the ETCRG (see Appendix).
The 3rd  Section-roughly the Red and Sulphur drainages, Central Section-Cypress and Sabine drainages, and Southern Section-Angelina and Neches drainages). You are asked to address the _ Section, but you may adjust the boundaries of your study area in any way you see fit. You are requested to summarize the Caddoan cultural history in your area and provide suggestions of cultural-taxonomic units based on chronological and distributional data. Additionally, please discuss the key research questions that could refine our understanding of Caddoan archeology in your area. You are encouraged to construct maps illustrating your ideas or speculations of cultural-taxonomic unit distributions through time and highlighting key sites. Please feel free to bring illustrative artifacts, photos, slides, or other hands-on materials to stimulate discussion. You are asked to (1) present a 20 minute informal talk followed by open round table discussion during the workshop, and (2) provide a 2 page summary of your remarks suitable for publication in the proceedings. Please notify one of the ECRG coordinators below concerning your willingness to participate as soon as possible and not later than February 1, 1999. We look forward to hearing from you during this stimulating workshop. During the course of the meeting, Alex Barker presented research findings regarding the occurrence of shell gorgets in the Caddo archaeological area. Summaries of current formulations of regional cultural history were presented by Bob Turner (Cypress Creek Basin) and Ross Fields (Upper Sulphur River Basin and Cooper Lake). These presentations were never published, however, and we still had the feeling that the ETCRG had not gotten off the ground as a useful research group. We suspect that the hiatus between the 5th and 6th ETCRG meetings was due in large part to our inability to articulate what we wanted the group to accomplish as well as the difficulty in organizing a group of archaeologists to focus on specific ETCRG-directed topics/themes that have their own research agendas and research commitments.
The ETCRG next met after a seven year hiatus. Our purpose in meeting again was to discuss the historic archaeology of the Caddo peoples in East Texas and adjacent Northwest Louisiana. The 6th ETCRG meeting was held December 2-3, 2006, in Nacogdoches, Texas, on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University. We chose to focus on the period after ca. A.D. 1542 to encourage, in light of recent findings and ongoing archaeological research, the consideration and development of a better regional understanding of the Caddo archaeological record in East Texas following European contact (Perttula and Middlebrook 2007: 1-7), as well as better understand (as seen through the archaeological record) the nature of interaction between the Caddo peoples in East Texas and Northwest Louisiana and Europeans (cf. Barr 2007). The various presentations (with maps, images, and hands-on materials) were followed by an open round table discussion where information was shared and archaeological questions and problems were posed and further considered by the group as a whole.
Attendees The 2006 ETCRG meeting was wide-ranging and varied. Most of the discussions focused on particular Historic Caddo archaeological sites and their general material culture character, but the meeting ended with questions concerning future directions in the study of the Historic Caddo archaeological record (Perttula and Middlebrook 2007:3-5). The participants in the meeting were sufficiently encouraged in the character and scope of the discus- The Mast site (41NA157) was the focus of a presentation by Tom Middlebrook, and led to a consideration of the Woodland/Caddo transition in the East Texas Pineywoods. The Mast site is primarily a Mossy Grove Woodland site with plain sandy paste (Goose Creek Plain, var. unspecified) pottery, dart points, and burned rock features; it is undated by radiocarbon at the present time, and no report on the excavations by Stephen F. Austin State University has been prepared. The site has no midden, and was perhaps seasonally occupied. The consensus of the ETCRG participants was that to learn more about the local archaeological record during Woodland and early Caddo times it would be important to focus on lifeways as can be detected in the archaeological deposits, and less on the specifics of material culture or cultural-taxonomic identifications; The Devils Ford Creek site (41SB157) is a late Woodland Mossy Grove culture site excavated by the U.S. Forest Service in 1999; no report has been published on this work. Velicia Bergstrom provided an overview of the archaeological findings; Timothy K. Perttula focused on the Caddo origins issue by discussing the archaeological findings from the Boyette site (41NA285) at Lake Naconiche (Perttula 2008). Here, excavations have identified a Late Woodland component that dates from cal AD 667-847, followed by an early Caddo component that dates from cal AD 873-1075; the latter is contemporaneous with the Alto phase, but is not a component of that phase or part of the same cultural group, but part of a separate Caddo com-munity. Characteristics of the material culture record (especially the sandy paste or tempered ceramic wares) suggest stylistic and technological similarities between the two components, rather than a stylistic and technological replacement (which would be expected if the Woodland and early Caddo groups were not related). Perttula views the 7th to early 9th century Woodland population to be directly antecedent or ancestral to the 9th-11th century Caddo population that lived at the Boyette site.
Our consideration of Caddo origins concluded with a discussion of the direction the ETCRG could proceed in arriving at a more current and broader understanding of Late Woodland and early Caddo populations and lifeways, and develop a more nuanced perspective on Caddo origins. One issue that was raised was our need to better appreciate what was taking place among other aboriginal groups at that time (ca. A.D. 700-1050)-and what "influences" or cultural practices might have been in play-particularly in the Lower Mississippi Valley, Cahokia, the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast, Toltec, and the Arkansas River valley (i.e., Spiro area). Future discussions of Caddo origins might profit by including archaeologists that are actively conducting archaeological research in these areas during the relevant temporal period. It was also agreed that it was important for ETCRG participants to work together to compile up-to-date archaeological information relevant to Caddo origins, including: material culture attributes and assemblages (i.e., ceramics, celts, chipped stone tools); mound constructions; mortuary rituals and regalia; kinds of structures found in ceremonial and domestic contexts; and absolute dates of sites and key features. Finally, ETCRG participants agreed that it is important to identify key sites thought to date between ca. A.D. 700-1050 that have the potential, through future work, to possess archaeological deposits of the appropriate age and character to directly contribute relevant archaeological information on Caddo origins. Some sites mentioned in this regard included James Pace (16DS268), Bowman (3LR46), Boxed Spring (41 UR30), Hale (41 TT12), and Fasken (41RR14) in northwestern Louisiana, southwestern Arkansas, and East Texas.
The Historic Caddo archaeology topic discussion in the 8th ETCRG meeting was initiated by Jeff Williams, whose presentation was entitled "Research on El Camino de los Tejas." This was an overview of research conducted to date, and the need to identify high potential significant sites along the trail, including historic Caddo sites. The idea was broached that the ETCRG work together through a National Park Service challenge cost share grant to locate and document such sites, in conjunction with involvement from the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, but no consensus or plan of action was reached on how to do that.
Further presentations on Historic Caddo archaeology at the 8th ETCRG included: George Avery's presentation concerned 2008 archaeological investigations (primarily shovel testing) in a small area of mission-era deposits at Mission Dolores (41SA25) in San Augustine, Texas. This work was done as part of a planned mission replication project at the site; Jim Tiller talked at length, accompanied with many maps, on the subject of the location of a number of early 19th century Caddo villages along the Texas-Louisiana border, including four villages (North Caddo, Middle Caddo, Big Spring, and South Caddo) in what is now Harrison County, Texas (see also Tiller 2008). He laid out the case that the 19th century Caddo village known as Timber Hill, Dehahuit's Timber Hill, is in actuality the North Caddo Village along Haggerty's Creek and Trammel's Trace. None of these villages have yet to be conclusively identified through archaeological investigations, however; Duncan McKinnon provided further information on the archaeo-geophysical survey investigations he has recently completed at the Battle site (3LA1) in the Great Bend area of the Red River. A wide variety of habitation features and possible burial areas have been identified in this work. Future plans here include continued geophysical survey in new areas at the site, conduct landscape geomorphological studies, archaeologically test identified geophysical anomalies, and synthesize the findings from the 1948 excavations at the site by Alex D. Krieger and Lynn Howard; The J. T. King (41NA15) site is an historic Caddo village in the Angelina River basin in western Nacogdoches County, situated on the northern route of the Camino Real de los Tejas, about 5 km east of the Angelina River. Tom Middlebrook discussed recent archaeological investigations (surface collection, shovel testing, and 1 x 1 m units) he carried out at the site, focusing particularly on the character of the aboriginal ceramics (dominated by grog-tempered brushed utility wares and Patton Engraved fine wares), as well as the lithics (predominantly on non-local cherts, including triangular arrow points); a cupreous tinkler was recovered from one of the 1 x 1 m units. Based primarily on the kinds and proportions of decorated sherds in the J. T. King site ceramic assemblage, Middlebrook suggested that the Caddo occupation is a component of the Deshazo subcluster within the ca. 1720 Anderson cluster (cf. Corbin 2007:19-20); Chet Walker next discussed the utility of an EM-61 geophysical instrument as a means for efficiently locating metal artifacts in archaeological deposits on Historic Caddo sites in East Texas; and Timothy K. Perttula ended the discussion of the Historic Caddo archaeology topic for the 8th ETCRG with a consideration of the diversity in late 17th-18th century ceramics on key Caddo sites in Nacogdoches County with well-studied assemblages, namely: Henry M. (41NA60, see Middlebrook and Perttula 2008), Deshazo (41NA27, Story 1995), and Spradley (41NA206), as well as other sites documented by Middlebrook (2007). Those analyses indicated that the Henry M. site and the Deshazo site are ceramically most similar; Bayou Loco and Angelina River sites are dominated by brushed utility wares; the Lanana Creek, Legg Creek, and Attoyac Bayou sites are part of a different local Caddo ceramic tradition. Finally, five distinct groupings of Historic Caddo sites can be defined employing various ceramic attributes, and these groupings may represent sites occupied by different and socially distinct Caddo communities.

CONCLUSIONS
The success of the last three ETCRG meetings has put the ETCRG on firm ground as a viable venue m which to discuss in detail-but in an informal setting-research issues, problems, and findings concerning East Texas Caddo archaeology. As long as there is a group of dedicated Caddo archaeological researchers that continue to work in the East Texas region, we hope that this group will remain a productive way in which to improve our understanding of the prehistory and history of the Caddo peoples.
As we write this, plans are afoot to hold the next, and 9th, ETCRG meeting in Nacogdoches, Texas, in 2009. The focus of the meeting has yet to be determined.

ACKNOWLEDGJ\IIENTS
First, we thank all of the various ETCRG meeting attendees, who came and actively participated in the meetings. We would also like to thank George Avery, Bo Nelson, and Duncan McKinnon for commenting on an earlier version of this article.