The West Island Site (41MXI65)

This paper describes a set of artifacts collected from the West Island site, a poorly known Titus phase cemetery in Ellison Creek Reservoir. The site is on a small knoll adjacent to a small spring branch that flows into the now-inundated Ellison Creek, a tributary of Big Cypress Creek. The site knoll is now no more than one foot (30 em) above the normal pool elevation of Ellison Creek Reservoir, and it is usually totally submerged. Up to five feet (1.52 meters) of white sand caps the knoll, and overlies the clay subsoil. Due to continued submergence, the knoll is being eroded by the reservoir, anq. consequently many stone tools and pieces of lithic debris are present along the water's edge. Dart points and arrowpoints have been found at the site, along with some pottery sherds, but no grounds tone implements. Small amounts of charcoal were found around the top of the knoll in pockets of modern mussel shell and gravels, but its association with the site deposits is unknown. No middens are known to be present on the knoll. The West Island site has been previously dug by private collectors sometime before 1965. Turner had examined some of the site collections, and reported that, ceramic vessels of the types Avery Engraved, Bailey Engraved, Bullard Brushed, Cowhide Stamped, Harleton Appliqued, Hodges Engraved, Karnack Brushed-Incised, Maydelle Incised, Ripley Engraved, Simms Engraved, Taylor Engraved, and Wilder Engraved were present in an unknown number of burials. These types of decorated ceramics are characteristic of the Titus phase, which dates from about 1400 to the 1600s.


INTRODUCTION AND SETTING
This paper describes a set of artifacts collected from the West Island site, a poorlyknown Titus phase cemetery in Ellison Creek Reservoir. The site is on a small knoll adjacent to a small spring branch that flows into the now-inundated Ellison Creek, a tributary of Big Cypress Creek (Figure 1). The site knoll is now no more than one foot (30 em) above the normal pool elevation of Ellison Creek Reservoir, and it is usually totally submerged. Up to five feet (1.52 meters) of white sand caps the knoll, and overlies the clay subsoil. Due to continued submergence, the knoll is being eroded by the reservoir, anq. consequently many stone tools and pieces of lithic debris are present along the water's edge. Dart points and arrowpoints have been found at the site, along with some pottery sherds, but no grounds tone implements. Small amounts of charcoal were found around the top of the knoll in pockets of modern mussel shell and gravels, but its association with the site deposits is unknown. No middens are known to be present on the knoll. Notes on Northeast Texas Archaeology, No. 1 The West Island site has been previously dug by private collectors sometime before 1965. Turner (1978: Figure 33) had examined some of the site collections, and reported that, present in an unknown number of burials. These types of decorated ceramics are characteristic of the Titus phase, which dates from about 1400 to the 1600s (Thurmond 1990;Perttula 1992).

SITE INVESTIGATIONS
Our investigations of the West Island site were conducted between February and September 1986. Upon initial inspection of the site, two large circular depressions were noted on the knoll. Troweling through the backdirt in the depressions established that not only were the depressions actually potholes previously dug in aboriginal graves at the site, but that artifacts missed in the potholing were encountered below the backdirt in both depressions. Four days were spent excavating the remnants of the burials--here labelled burial #1 and #2.

Grave Locations and Descriptions
Burial #1 was found at the southeast end of the knoll. After several pottery sherds (mainly body sherds) were found in the backdirt, a 3 x 3 foot (0.92 x 0.92 meters) unit was laid out over the hole. Troweling the unit produced four ceramic vessels (vessels #1-4) side-by-side at what was the west end of the burial at 50 cm below the surface. No other artifacts were found in the unit, and no human remains were preserved in the burial fill.
Excavation of Burial #1 was very difficult because of the constant flow of water into the excavation unit Burial #2, located along the northeast shore, was identified by troweling in a large circular depression visible at the water's edge. Excavation of another 3 x 3 foot unit (0.92 x 0.92 meters) at this depression also encountered four ceramic vessels (#5-8). These were 29 cm below the bottom of the pothole, about 55 cm below the ground surface. All four ceramic vessels were found clustered together at the west end of the burial. A small Gary dart point was recovered from inside vessel #7. Again, no human remains were found preserved with Burial #2.
Because of previous potholing, the graves were not complete. They did appear to be those of single individuals, based on the number of artifacts retrieved from them and their burial position. They were oriented east-west, the body probably supine with the head to 2~ Notes on Northeast Texas Archaeology, No.1 the east (Turner 1978:105). The east-west placement of the burials at West Island is a common and general characteristic of Titus phase cemeteries in Northeast Texas.

1HE ARTIFACfS
This section describes the artifacts found with Burials #1 and #2 at the site, along with a small sample of material collected from the surface of the site by the authors. Artifacts of pottery, stone, and bone were recovered from West Island during the investigations discussed above.

Pottery
Eight pottery vessels were recovered from the site, vessels #1-4 from Burial #1, and vessels #5-8 from Burial #2. Each of the vessels is described below, with the exception of vessel #4, as this vessel was stolen before it could be thoroughly studied.   The lithic assemblage from the site consists of several hundred pieces of lithic debitage, four bifacial tools, 19 dart points, and six arrowpoints (Figure 4). The predominant lithic raw material is a locally-derived quartzite, along with petrified wood, and cherts.
Novaculite from Red River gravels (Banks 1990) is also present at the site. The diagnostic dart points include: 16 Gary, one Ellis, one Kent, and one Yarbrough.
Among the arrowpoints were three untyped fragments, a Friley, an Alba, and a Scallom type. The frequency of Gary points in the projectile point assemblage suggests that a Late Archaic component is also present at the West Island site. Except for the one Gary point from burial #2, all the diagnostic lithic tools were recovered from the site swface.

Bone Artifacts
A bone awl possibly made from a deer radius was found on top of a backdirt pile. It was poorly preserved, with most of the outside layer of bone badly eroded. The piece was 11.5 cm in length, with a basal width of 2.5 em.
A poorly preserved charred or blackened deer mandible, with teeth intact, was also found at the site. This mandible was found in Burial #1 nestled between vessels #3 and #4.

CONCLUDING STATEMENTS
Our major objective in preparing this report was to provide information on the Titus phase burials at the West Island site. Our 1986 investigations conf'nmed that a severely disturbed Late Caddoan period cemetery was present at the site, as remnants of two burials with diagnostic Titus phase ceramics (Suhm et al. 1954;Turner 1978) were identified there. No midden deposits were detected at the site, and the number of individual burials that were once present there is unknown.
The artifacts found in the burials, particularly the ceramic vessels, are typical of the  (Thurmond 1990). A scatter of Late Archaic projectile points and lithic debris also suggests that the site was utilized at other times than during the Titus phase, but the limited amount of such material is indicative only of an intermittent occupation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank Ben Hay for his help, Bo Nelson for encouraging us to put our notes on paper, and we owe a special thanks to Dr. Timothy Perttula, who virtually took a combined set of jumbled notes and turned it into a readable report.