Documentation of Cemeteries and Funerary Offerings from Sites in the Upper Neches River Basin, Anderson, Cherokee, and Smith Counties, Texas

Cite this Record Perttula, Timothy K.; Nelson, Bo; and Selden, Robert Z. Jr. (2014) "Documentation of Cemeteries and Funerary Offerings from Sites in the Upper Neches River Basin, Anderson, Cherokee, and Smith Counties, Texas," Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State: Vol. 2014, Article 68. https://doi.org/10.21112/ita.2014.1.68 ISSN: 2475-9333 Available at: https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ita/vol2014/iss1/68


Introduction
This publications concerns the documentation of ceramic vessels, a ceramic pipe, a stemmed arrow point, and glass beads from several post-A.D. 1400 ancestral Caddo sites in the upper Neches River basin in Smith, Anderson, and Cherokee counties, Texas. Two of the sites have been recorded and have state of Texas trinomials: Vanderpool (41SM77) on Saline Creek and Pipe (41AN67) along the Neches River, but the other sites (one also on Saline Creek) and collections have not been.
These artifacts were recovered from a series of burials excavated and recorded by Buddy Calvin Jones at the sites in 1956 and 1960. In the case of the Byars site in Smith County, it is not known when it was investigated by Jones. Notes on the excavations and funerary offerings are curated by the Gregg County Historical Museum.

Vanderpool Site (41SM77)
The Vanderpool site, also referred to by Jones as the FIN site in Smith County, is on Saline Creek in the Neches River basin in the southwestern part of the county, in the western part of the East Texas Pineywoods (Figure 1). It is known that a Mr. Wallace and a Mr. Vanderpool excavated two burials at the site in 1957 (Johnson 1961:224), and both these individuals dug at the Saline Creek site in 1956 with Jones (see below). Johnson (1961) noted that the two burials had contained an unspecified number of Frankston phase (ca. A.D. 1400-1650) ceramic vessels, 14 Perdiz arrow points, a celt, and one large chipped stone knive.
According to Jones' notes, a total of five burials were excavated at the Vanderpool site (Burials 1-5). However, his notes only concern Burials 1, 3-5, and even these notes are not extensive. Burials 3 and 4 were oriented east-west and were close together, and Burial 5 was more than 30 m to the south. His notes for Burial 3 indicate that the deceased Caddo individual was placed in a grave that was 76 cm in depth, 107 cm in width, and 203 cm in length. The burial fill was a lightly-colored sandy soil, indicating that Burial 3 had not been placed in a midden deposit.
Jones burial pottery catalogue for the Vanderpool site lists a total of 34 ceramic vessels in four of the burials: two ceramic vessels as associated funerary offerings in Burial 1, 14 ceramic vessels in Burial 3, 12 vessels in Burial 4, and six ceramic vessels in Burial 5. This is a mean of 8.5 ceramic vessels per burial in the cemetery.

Burial 1
There is one ceramic vessel in the Vanderpool site collections from Burial 1, although Jones' burial pottery catalogue lists two (SC 1 and SC 2):

Burial 3
Burial 3 is that of an adult placed in an extended supine position with its head at the eastern end of the grave, and facing west ( Figure 3). The many vessels in the grave were apparently placed in rows along both side of the body, from the head down to the feet. Two distinctive engraved jars (FIN S5 and S6) were by the head and the left shoulder, while two bottles were placed by the right shoulder. A mixture of bowls and jars were along what would have been the body mid-section and the legs. The locations of the glass beads, ceramic pipe, and arrow point within the grave pit are not known, as they were not depicted on Jones' burial drawing (see Figure 3).
Thirteen of the 14 ceramic vessels that had been placed in Burial 3 are in the Vanderpool site collections at the Gregg County Historical Museum. The one missing vessel is FIN S8, which is described in Jones' burial pottery catalogue as a "quadrapod pot."

Ceramic Pipe
A keeled ceramic elbow pipe (2003.08.120, SC 14/60) was also placed in Burial 3 as a funerary offering. The pipe is tempered with grog and has a sandy paste. It is 65.2 mm in length and 35.0 mm in width. The bowl is 14.1 mm in height, with a 35.8 mm orifice diameter. The exterior diameter of the stem is 28.7 mm, and it is 7.6 mm in thickness. The pipe stem is decorated with a series of hatched ovals and triangles ( Figure 17). This form of decorated elbow pipe is previously undocumented in upper Neches River basin Caddo sites (see Perttula 2011b: Figure 6-23).

Glass Beads
A large number of small (less than 3 mm in diameter) drawn glass beads of European manufacture were among the Burial 3 funerary offerings. These include 782 white beads, 34 blue beads, and 48 red Cornaline d'Aleppo beads with dark gray interiors ( Figure 18).

Arrow point
Also accompanying Burial 3 is a straight-stemmed arrow point made from a local heat-treated quartzite. The blade is lightly serrated, and the barbs are squared and prominent ( Figure 19).

Burial 4
There is very little information available about Burial 4 in the Jones' notes. This essentially only includes a rough plan map showing its location parallel to Burial 3, with the same east-west orientation, and an accompanying sketch showing the placement of the 12 vessels in the grave. The vessels were placed along what would have been the right side of the

Saline Creek Site
The Saline Creek site is a previously undocumented Late Caddo, Frankston phase cemetery on Saline Creek in Smith County, Texas that was excavated by Buddy Jones, Ray Vanderpool, L. A. Wallace, and Bill Cox in November 1956. Its exact location is not known, but it is likely to have located very near the Vanderpool site (41SM77), also on Saline Creek in the upper part of the Lake Palestine flood pool along the creek.
Burials 1 and 2 were excavated at the site, which was in a cotton field along the west side of Saline Creek (Figure 38). No vessels or other funerary offerings from the two burials have been identified in the Gregg County Museum collections from the site, but burial and vessel drawings are available, and these materials form the basis of our documentation. The two burials were in pits that were oriented northwest-southeast, likely with the head of the deceased at the southeast end of the pit, facing northwest. Both burial pits extended a short distance into the underlying B-horizon clay.
Burial 1 had six ceramic vessels placed along the body of the deceased, from the skull area to the lower legs; the human remains were very fragmentary. Based on vessel drawings, these vessels included a Poynor Engraved cylindrical bottle, two Hood Engraved, var. Hood effigy bowls, two broken carinated bowls of uncertain decoration, and a large Poynor Engraved, var. Hood carinated bowl along what would have been the lower legs ( Figure 39).
Amidst the ceramic vessel funerary offerings were several stone tools. These were a large oval-shaped biface, a ground stone celt, and a tight cluster of eight Perdiz arrow points. The points and the celt may have been inside a leather pouch when they were placed in the grave.
Burial 2 had five ceramic vessels as funerary offerings. By the head of the deceased were a long-necked bottle, a plain everted rim jar, and a cylindrical Hume Engraved bottle ( Figure  40). Near the lower legs and feet were a small Killough Pinched jar and a Hood Engraved, var. Hood effigy bowl. Eight Perdiz arrow points were scattered along and above the body of the deceased. Near the upper part of the burial, above the head area, was a charcoal concentration ( Figure 40), suggesting that a fire had been built and maintained in the grave after it had been partially filled in.
The occurrence of Hood Engraved, var. Hood effigy bowls, a Hume Engraved bottle, and a Poynor Engraved, var. Hood carinated bowl from the two burials-along with the Killough Pinched jar-confirm that the burials are from a Frankston phase cemetery. The engraved fine wares suggest that the cemetery was in use between ca. A. D. 1480-1560 (Perttula 2011b: Table 6-37).

Pipe Site (41AN67)
Buddy Jones identified and investigated the Pipe site (41AN67) in 1968. The site was on a low terrace or lower toe slope in the Neches River valley, with a tree-covered floodplain to the north. The Pipe site had a substantial midden deposit as well as a cemetery with 21 burials ( Figure  41). One of the burials was accompanied by a large mass of broken elbow pipes (Perttula 2011a).
In 1969, a year after this site had been excavated by Buddy Calvin Jones, Southern Methodist University conducted excavations at the Pipe site (which they called the Ferguson site since they were unaware of the Jones excavations) at Lake Palestine (Anderson et al. 1974:121-134). This work recovered an abundance of Frankston phase ceramic vessel sherds (n=7964, including Poynor Engraved, Hume Engraved, Maydelle Incised, Bullard Brushed, Killough Pinched, and LaRue Neck Banded) and ceramic pipe sherds (n=43), mussel shell fragments, animal bones, and a modicum of chipped stone tool artifacts. The latter included 16 arrow points and fragments (of the Perdiz type), 13 flake tools and scrapers, and only 297 pieces of lithic debris.
There are two radiocarbon dates from the Pipe/Ferguson site (Perttula 1997: Table 1), both obtained from the SMU excavations (Anderson et al. 1974). Both dates are on a wood post fragment buried in the midden deposits. These dates, using IntCal09 (Reimer et al. 2009) to calibrate their conventional ages, have calibrated age ranges at 2 sigma (95% probability) of A.D. 1529-1683(Tx-1275) and A.D. 1444-1644(Tx-1276. The mean calibrated age range of these dates is A.D. 1487-1663. A seriation of ceramics from Early to Historic Caddo sites developed for the upper Neches River/Lake Palestine area, indicates that the Pipe/Ferguson site likely dates to the middle part of the Frankston phase, from between ca. A.D. 1480-1560 (Perttula 2011b). Stable isotope analysis of collagen and apatite in a right femur from Burial 11 indicates that the ancestral Caddo group that lived in this part of the upper Neches River basin had a diet with a high contribution of maize (Wilson et al. 2012:83).
One of the vessels from the Pipe site has been recently identified in the Gregg County Historical Museum collections, an engraved bottle from Burial 2.

The Byars Ranch Site in Smith County, Texas
There is a single ancestral Caddo ceramic vessel in the collections of the Gregg County Historical Museum from the Byars Ranch site in Smith County (Perttula 2006:96). This site appears to have been located in the Neches River valley/Lake Palestine area in the southwestern part of the county, but its precise location is not known. Nothing more is known about the site or the context of the vessel, although it is quite likely that the vessel was collected from a Caddo burial. The form of the bottle from the Byars site is very similar to that commonly seen on Late Caddo Frankston phase Hume Engraved vessels (Suhm and Jelks 1962:Plate 42a-c, e). Thus, it is likely that the site has a ca. A.D. 1400-1650 component with a cemetery.

Upper Neches Vessel Series
A series of 11 vessels of as yet unidentified provenience in the Gregg County Historical Museum are stylistically consistent with Late Caddo Frankston phase vessels found in upper Neches River basin sites in Smith, Anderson, and Cherokee counties. Most of the vessels in this series are thought to be from sites in Smith County, based on the fact that many have a S. C. label on them.
The 11 vessels include both fine wares, utility wares, and plain wares. The fine wares are Poynor Engraved carinated bowls (n=5) with a variety of motifs, a Poynor Engraved bottle, and a Hood Engraved, var. Hood effigy bowl; the utility wares comprise a Bullard Brushed jar, a brushed-appliqued jar, and a brushed-incised bowl; and the plain wares include one plain bowl. The vessels are tempered with combinations of grog (82%), bone (27%), and/or hematite (18%). The range of fine wares suggest they are from burials that date from ca. A.D. 1400-1560 in the Frankston phase (Perttula 2011b: Table 6

Summary and Conclusions
In this publication, we have discussed the archaeological findings from several ancestral Caddo sites with burials in the upper Neches River basin in Anderson and Smith counties, and probably also from Cherokee County (concerning the upper Neches vessel series). These sites and collections were obtained by Buddy Jones in the 1950s and early 1960s, and they all have archaeological materials that date after A.D. 1400, during the Frankston phase, and one burial (Burial 3) at the Vanderpool site (41SM77) has European trade goods (+800 glass beads) and Patton Engraved ceramic vessels that indicate this interment dates to the late 17 thearly 18 th century, during the post-A.D. 1650 Allen phase. This burial is one of a relatively low number of upper Neches River basin sites that have European trade goods found together with Caddo archaeological material remains, either found in burial associations (Cole 1975;Kleinschmidt 1982;Perttula 2010Perttula , 2011c or from habitation contexts (Perttula and Nelson 2007;Walters and Perttula 2012), and thus they document contact between the Caddo groups living in this region and European traders.
Although there is not much specific information available about the burial excavations at the sites, it appears that the burials are much like those from other upper Neches River basin Caddo sites. They are in cemeteries likely kept separate from nearby habitation areas, with single interments, probably adults, that were laid in extended supine position with the deceased's head at the eastern end of the grave, facing west towards the setting sun (Perttula 2011c:431-432). The deceased had accompanying funerary offerings, namely an assortment of ceramic vessels and arrow points (most commonly Perdiz points, probably in quivers), as well as clay elbow pipes.
In the present set of upper Neches River basin sites, there is different levels of information available on 51 vessels from funerary contexts, including 31 vessels from Vanderpool; seven from the Saline Creek site; one vessel from the Pipe site (41AN67); one vessel from the Byars Ranch site in Smith County; and 11 vessels from uncertain proveniences in an upper Neches River vessel series. Vessel forms include carinated bowls (n=17, 33%), bowls (n=6, 12%), effigy bowls (n=6, 12%), jars (n=12, 23%), and bottles (n=10, 20%). Effigy bowls are a notable feature of upper Neches River post-A.D. 1400 vessel assemblages (Perttula 2011b).
These vessels are tempered with grog (n=21, 49%), grog-bone (n=2, 4.5%), groghematite (n=13, 30%), bone (n=6, 14%), and bone-hematite (n=2, 4.5%). Vessels with grog, either as the sole temper or in combination with either bone or hematite, comprise 82% of the analyzed sample from these sites. Similarly, 23% have bone temper and 34% have hematite temper. The use of hematite for tempering has been noted to be especially common in upper Neches River basin Caddo vessel assemblages that date after ca. A.D. 1480 (Perttula 2011b:278) The vessels were fired in several different ways: fired and cooled in an oxidizing or high oxygen environment (n=12, 28%); incompletely oxidized during firing (n=1, 2%); fired and cooled in a reducing or low oxygen environment (n=4, 9%); and fired in a reducing environment but cooled in the open air (n=26, 60%). Almost 70% of the vessels were fired in a reducing environment, which was a common practice in most East Texas Caddo ceramic assemblages. The relatively high proportion of vessels fired in an oxidizing or incompletely oxidizing environments (leaving the vessels with a reddish-brown color) is consistent with firing conditions noted in a large sample of mortuary vessels from Frankston phase sites in Anderson and Cherokee counties (Perttula 2011b: Table 6-33), and this form of firing vessels became more common after ca. A.D. 1480 to A.D. 1560 (Perttula 2011b:278).
The seriation of fine ware vessels in the upper Neches River basin by Perttula (2011b:Table 6-37) suggests that the sites discussed in this publication date primarily between A.D. 1480-1650, though there may have been use of the sites between A.D. 1400-1480 as well, and one burial from the Vanderpool site dates from the late 17 th -early 18 th century. This temporal estimation for the present set of vessels from mortuary contexts is based on the common occurrence of Poynor Engraved, var. Hood and var. Freeman from A.D. 1480-1650 in other upper Neches River basin sites, Poynor Engraved, var. Blackburn and var. Cook from ca. A.D. 1400-1560, and the frequency of Hood Engraved effigy bowls between ca. A.D. 1400-1560. Hume Engraved bottles occur only in ca. A.D. 1480-1650 mortuary contexts. Regarding the regional varieties of Poynor Engraved in the present set of sites, Var. I and Var. S are present in ca. A.D. 1400-1480 mortuary contexts in other sites in the basin, while Var. D has been found in ca. A.D. 1480-1560 contexts, and Var. E is present in cemeteries that date from ca. A.D. 1480-1650.
In summary, the mortuary vessels documented from the Vanderpool, Saline Creek, Pipe, and the Byars Ranch sites, and the vessels in the upper Neches River vessel series, are evidence of ancestral Caddo use of cemeteries in this region for at least a 300 year period, from ca. A.D. 1400 to the early 18 th century. Their principal use was after ca. A.D. 1480. The mortuary practices evident from the study of the notes, records, and vessels we have documented in the Buddy Jones collection at the Gregg County Historical Museum are consistent with the practices and beliefs apparent in many other Frankston and Allen phase communities and cemeteries in the upper Neches River basin in Anderson, Cherokee, and Smith counties in East Texas.