Documentation of Caddo Vessels in the Robert L. Turner Collection at Stephen F. Austin State University

Cite this Record Perttula, Timothy K.; Selden, Robert Z. Jr.; and Walters, Mark (2014) "Documentation of Caddo Vessels in the Robert L. Turner Collection at Stephen F. Austin State University," Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State: Vol. 2014, Article 72. https://doi.org/10.21112/ ita.2014.1.72 ISSN: 2475-9333 Available at: https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ita/vol2014/iss1/72

vi Documentation of Caddo Vessels in the Robert L. Turner Collection Introduction Perttula et al . (2010) documented more than 300 ceramic vessels in the Robert L . Turner, Jr . collection from ancestral Caddo burial sites in East Texas, primarily from the Big Cypress Creek basin, but also including vessels from sites in the middle Sabine, lower Sulphur River, and Neches/Angelina River basins . When the Turner collection was donated to Stephen F . Austin State University (SFASU) in 2012, it was noted that some of the vessels in the collection had not been documented by Perttula et al . (2010) . In the spring of 2014 we had an opportunity to remedy the situation, and with the permission of DR . George Avery of the Anthropology and Archaeology Laboratory at SFASU, we have documented an additional 38 vessels in the Turner collection . These vessels are from the G . W . Rumsey (41CP3), Tuck Carpenter (41CP5), Harold Williams (41CP10), B . J . Horton (41CP20), and Alex Justiss (41TT13) sites in the Big Cypress Creek basin (Figure 1) .

Vessel Documentation
To facilitate the vessel documentation and aid in comparisons with other Caddo vessel documentation projects, we established a documentation protocol several years ago to assist in the analysis of each of the vessels from the different sites . Each of the ceramic vessels in the collections is described and analyzed utilizing a consistent set of morphological, functional, and stylistic attributes . The purpose of the documentation is to thoroughly characterize the character of each of the ceramic vessels in the different Caddo collections . The sections that follow provide the completed vessel recordation forms for 38 Caddo vessels from five ancestral Caddo sites in East Texas (see Figure 1), as well as accompanying vessel photographic illustrations .
The following attributes were employed in the ceramic vessel study: Non-plastics: Deliberate and indeterminate materials in the paste (Rice 1987:411), including a variety of tempers (grog or crushed sherds, bone, hematite, shell, quartz sands, etc .) and "particulate matter of some size ." The grog, bone, and hematite non-plastics appear to have been deliberately added to the paste as tempers . The bone used for temper had been burned and calcined, then crushed, before it was added to the paste .
Vessel Form: The principal vessel form categories include open containers (bowls, carinated bowls, and compound bowls) and restricted containers, including jars and bottles of several shapes and sizes . As restricted containers, jars allow access by hand, but bottles do not (Brown 1996:335) . Another important vessel form, at least in burial contexts, is the effigy bowl with a modeled head (usually a bird or duck head) and a tab tail. Occasionally, an effigy vessel will have a broader tab tail that supported an anthropomorphic or zoomorphic tail rider (see Suhm and Jelks 1962:Plate 24k) .
Additional form attributes that were recorded on each of the vessels (depending upon their completeness) include the rim profile (outflaring or everted, vertical or standing, and inverted), lip profile (rolled to the exterior, rounded, flat, or thinned), and base shape (flat or rounded).
Core Colors: Observations on ceramic cross-section colors permit consideration of oxidation patterns (Teltser 1993: Figure 2A-H; Perttula 2005, ed.), and thus the conditions under which the vessel was fired and then cooled after firing. Comments are included for these attributes on the presence and location of fire-clouding, sooting or smudging from cooking use (Skibo 1992), and the preservation and location of charred organic remains or residues .
Wall Thickness: Thickness was recorded in millimeters, using a vernier caliper, at the lip, along the rim, at several points along the body, and at the base when possible (only for the vessels that were not complete) .
Interior and Exterior Surface Treatment: The primary methods of finishing the surface of the vessel include smoothing, burnishing, and polishing (Rice 1987:138), although polishing is generally rarely seen on burial vessels . Brushing is a popular method of roughening the surface (particularly the body) of large and small Middle Caddo (ca . A .D . 1200-1400) and Late Caddo (ca . A .D . 1400-1680) period cooking jars and other utility wares, as well as Historic Caddo sites (post-A .D . 1680) in certain parts of East Texas .
Here it is considered a decorative treatment rather than solely a functional surface treatment (cf . Rice 1987:138), although not all Caddo ceramic analysts treat brushing as a decorative treatment (cf . Gadus et al. 2006:31). In certain fine ware vessels, brushed bodies accompanied engraved rim panels. Smoothing creates "a finer and more regular surface… [and] has a matte rather than a lustrous finish" (Rice 1987:138). Burnishing, on the other hand, creates an irregular lustrous finish marked by parallel facets left by the burnishing tool (perhaps a pebble or bone) . A polished surface treatment is marked by a uniform and highly lustrous surface finish, done when the vessel is dry, but without "the pronounced parallel facets produced by burnishing leather-hard clay" (Rice 1987:138) .
The application of a hematite-rich clay slip (Ferring and Perttula 1987), either red or black after firing in an oxidizing or reducing (i .e ., low-oxygen) environment, is another form of surface treatment noted in these vessel assemblages, albeit very rarely . The clay slip is more frequently applied on the vessel exterior than on the interior surface, and then was either burnished or polished after it was leather-hard or dry .
Height and Orifice Diameter: These attributes, measured in centimeters, were recorded with a ruler .
Diameter at Bottom of Rim and Base Diameter: Also recorded in millimeters using a ruler, these attributes permit characterization of the overall contour and shape of the vessel . With bottles, we also obtained measurements of their maximum body diameter .
Volume: Previously, vessel volume in liters was determined by filling (to within 1 mm of the lip) the vessel with lentil seeds, then dumping the lentil seeds in containers of known volume . However, given the large number of Caddo vessels that have been measured over the years and volumes established, where measurements of height and orifice diameter were be obtained, volumes were estimated by comparison with known vessel volumes of specific forms (i.e., carinated bowl, jar, bottle, compound bowl, and bowl) in other documented Caddo vessel assemblages .
Decoration: Decorative techniques present in the vessel collections include engraving and excising, incising, punctating, pinching, lip notching, brushing, neck banding, and appliquéing . On certain vessels, primarily the utility wares, combinations of decorative techniques (i .e ., brushed-punctated) created the decorative elements and motifs . Engraving and lip notching were done with a sharp tool when the vessel was either leather-hard, or after it was fired, while the other decorative techniques were executed with tools (incising and punctation), by adding strips of clay to the wet body (appliqué), by crimping the coils (neck banding), using frayed sticks or grass stems (brushing) dragged across the body surface, or fingernails (certain forms of punctations and pinching), when the vessel was wet or still plastic . Excising is considered a form of engraved decoration, where the clay is deliberately and closely marked/scraped and carved away with a sharp tool, usually to create triangular elements (the pendant triangle or small tick marks), negative elements, or crescent-shaped elements or brackets that separate or serve to define scrolls (Suhm and Jelks 1962:Plate 64a-b, f) .
A red clay film or wash was added to the surface (interior and/or exterior surfaces) of some vessels as a slip before they were fired. Another form of vessel decoration is the use of red (hematite or ochre) or white (kaolin clay) clay pigments that have been smeared, impressed, or rubbed into the engraved lines of certain vessels .
Type: The kinds of named ceramic types in these collections follow primarily the work of Suhm and Jelks (1962); Mockingbird Punctated is defined in Perttula and Selden (2014). A series of varieties of Ripley Engraved have also been defined that follow closely the engraved motifs illustrated by Thurmond (1990: Figure 6), and depend upon his ceramic vessel classifications of more than 740 Ripley Engraved carinated bowls and compound bowls in the Big Cypress Creek basin ( Figure 2) . Turner Engraved has also been recently defined in the Titus phase vessel collections from several sites in the Big Cypress Creek basin (Figure 3) .

G. W. Rumsey Site (41CP3)
The G . W . Rumsey site is on Greasy Creek, across the creek from the Late Caddo Titus phase mound center and large community cemetery at the Shelby Mound site (41CP71) (Perttula and Nelson 2004;Perttula et al . 2010: Figure 6) . The site has both extensive Late Caddo habitation/midden deposits (Thurmond 1990:139), and Caddo burials of both Middle Caddo (see Turner 1997) and Late Caddo, Titus phase, age . The cemetery area is reported to be approximately 30 m from the thick Titus phase midden deposits (Thurmond 1990:139) .

Tuck Carpenter Site (41CP5)
The Tuck Carpenter site (41CP5), on Dry Creek several miles from its confluence with Big Cypress Creek (see Perttula et al . 2010: Figure 6), is perhaps the best known Titus phase cemetery in the Big Cypress Creek basin . This is due to the careful analysis and reporting of the recovered funerary offerings and remains from 45 burials excavated by Turner and R . W . Walsh in the 1960s (Turner 1978(Turner , 1992 . More than 95 percent of the graves had the bodies of single individuals laid in an extended supine position on the floor of the pit, but two burial features (Burials 21 and 23) had two individuals placed side by side in the burial pit The Tuck Carpenter site is a large community cemetery that was apparently used for the interment of Caddo peoples for a considerable span of time in the 15th to the 17th century A .D . The burials were laid out in an east-west direction in a number of rows (Turner 1978: Figure 3), amidst an existing midden deposit . A wide assortment of funerary offerings were placed in the graves, including 402 ceramic vessels, eight ceramic pipes, four ceramic ear spools, two wood ear ornaments, one sandstone ear spool with a copper plate covering, one sandstone ear spool, 57 Talco arrow points, 19 Maud points, 55 Bassett points, 57 Perdiz point, one arrow point of unidentified type, one large chipped biface or Galt biface (Thurmond 1990: Table 23) of non-local chert (Thurmond 1990:144), one biface fragment, seven celts, one metate, four manos, four abrading stones, two polishing stones, one chipped gouge, deer mandibles, deer beamers, clay pigment masses, one marine shell columella bead, turtle carapaces, and mussel shells (Turner 1978:12-49) .

Harold Williams Site (41CP10)
The Harold Williams site, also referred to as the Albert Hilton Farm in the mid-1940s when the site was initially found, was first brought to notice when a large flood (in 1943?) washed out a number of Caddo burials and ceramic vessels on a low terrace of Dry Creek, a tributary to Big Cypress Creek (Turner 1997;Turner and Smith 2003) . Mr . Hilton sold the vessels he collected to several individuals, including Robert L . Turner, Jr .
In 1959, Ralph Nicholas, Ed German, and Turner excavated 19 extended Caddo burials from a Titus phase cemetery in one area of the Harold Williams site (Turner 1997;Turner and Smith 2003) . Funerary offerings in these burials includes 55 ceramic vessels, one ceramic elbow pipe, a single pulley-shaped ceramic ear spool, three Bassett arrow points, 14 Talco points, an abrading stone, and three ground stone celts (Turner and Smith 2003:Table 14) . Anecdotal information also suggests that more than 80 burials have actually been excavated from the site over the years, and thus that there is a ca . A .D . 1550-early 1600s Titus phase community cemetery at this place (Turner and Smith 2003:39, 54) .
Archeological investigations in 1967, before and during a Texas Archeological Society Field School held at the site, documented that the Harold Williams site also has Middle Caddo period habitation deposits, including a midden covering a 75 x 60 m area (ca . 1 .1 acres) (Thurmond 1990:146), post holes from an oval structure, extensive amounts of daub, pit features, and three burials (with nine vessels) in Area A at the eastern end of the site . Among the funerary offerings from these burials is a Nacogdoches Engraved bottle with an engraved rattlesnake motif (Turner and Smith 2003: Figure 12b

B. J. Horton Site (41CP20)
The B. J. Horton site (41CP20) is on an upland ridge overlooking the Big Cypress Creek floodplain (see Perttula et al . 2010: Figure 6); Walkers Creek lies a short distance to the south (Hunt et al . 1996:Figure 1) . The site is primarily a Titus phase cemetery with at least 19 excavated burials (Turner 1978: Figure  33; Perttula 2014) .
Ralph Nicholas, Ed German, and Robert L . Turner, Jr . excavated 15 burials at the site in September and October 1958, and several others were known to have been excavated by Alan Young in the late 1960s (Hunt et al . 1996:15) . Available notes and records from several of the burials (Burials 1-5, 8-12, and 15) compiled by Turner have been reproduced by Hunt et al . (1996:Appendix F) . These indicate that the following funerary offerings were placed with the burials: 83 ceramic vessels, one ceramic pipe, two Perdiz points, one Maud point, 23 Bassett points, two Talco point, nine unidentified points, and two ground stone celts . The Alex Justiss site (41TT13) is principally a 17th century Titus phase cemetery on an upland ridge landform in the Swauano Creek valley in the Big Cypress Creek basin (Bell 1981;Rogers et al . 2003) (see Perttula et al . 2010: Figure 6) . During excavations by Ralph Nicholas, Ed German, and Bob Turner in 1959, a total of 27 Caddo burials were excavated in the cemetery, with at least 182 ceramic vessels placed in the graves as funerary offerings, along with 69 arrow points (including 10 unique side-notched points, see Bell 1981: Figure 41) and a ceramic pipe (Bell 1981: Tables 4 and 5) . An additional burial (Burial 28) was excavated by PBS&J some years later, and prior to the expansion of SH 49 across the site (Rogers et al . 2003: Figure 10) .

Summary and Conclusions
The 38 ancestral Caddo ceramic vessels documented in this report from the Robert L . Turner, Jr . collection in the Anthropology and Archaeology Laboratory at Stephen F . Austin State University are from five sites in the Big Cypress Creek basin in East Texas: G. W. Rumsey (41CP3), Tuck Carpenter (41CP5), Harold Williams (41CP10), B . J . Horton (41CP20), and Alex Justiss (41TT13) . Perttula et al . (2010) previously documented a number of other vessels from these same sites . These vessels are funerary objects that had been placed with Caddo burials in cemeteries at each of the sites .
The decorative elements and motifs on these vessels, as well as the various vessel forms represented in the collections, are consistent with Late Caddo period, Titus phase (ca . A .D . 1430-1680) vessel assemblages in the Big Cypress Creek basin . The vast majority of these vessels are tempered with grog, and were fired in a low oxygen or reducing environment, but then cooled in the open air.
The fine wares in the collection are dominated by several varieties of Ripley Engraved (var. Cash, var. Galt, var. Gandy, var. Carpenter, var. McKinney, cf . var. Gandy, and var. Williams, as well as var. unspecified), the principal Titus phase fine ware; these include carinated bowls and compound bowls (including one with rim peaks). Another fine ware in the collection is Turner Engraved, var. Turner . This type/decorative style occurs on compound bowls .
Utility wares in this part of the Turner collection include Maydelle Incised, La Rue Neck Banded, McKinney Plain, and Mockingbird Punctated jars, as well as jars with vertical incised decorative elements; and several jars with punctated-appliqued-brushed elements on the vessel rim and/or body, including one vessel with rim peaks . One small bowl has horizontal incised lines on the rim as well as a plain tab tail .
Although they are not common, there are also plain wares in this part of the Turner collection . They include carinated bowls, bottles, and jars .