Ancestral Caddo Ceramic Vessels from Sites in Harrison and Ancestral Caddo Ceramic Vessels from Sites in Harrison and Titus Counties, Texas Titus

This article puts on record the documentation of 17 ancestral Caddo ceramic vessels from five sites in Harrison and Titus counties in East Texas in the collections of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin. This documentation is part of the overall and larger effort to develop an ancestral Caddo ceramic vessel database as well as build online ceramic vessel galleries on the Index of Texas Archeology website by Dr. Robert Z. Selden, Jr.


Introduction
This article puts on record the documentation of 17 ancestral Caddo ceramic vessels from five sites in Harrison and Titus counties in East Texas in the collections of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin (TARL) (Figure 1).This documentation is part of the overall and larger effort to develop an ancestral Caddo ceramic vessel database (McKinnon 2019) as well as build online ceramic vessel galleries on the Index of Texas Archeology website by Dr. Robert Z. Selden, Jr. (Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas).

Vessel Documentation
In this ancestral Caddo ceramic vessel documentation effort, the following consistent set of attributes were employed in the study and analysis: Non-plastics: Deliberate and indeterminate materials in the paste (Rice 1987:411), including a variety of tempers (i.e., grog or crushed sherds, bone, hematite, and shell, as well as combinations of different temper inclusions) and "particulate matter of some size."The grog, bone, hematite, or shell appears to have been deliberately added to the paste as tempers.The bone or shell used for temper had been burned and calcined, then crushed, before it was added to the paste.
Vessel Form: Vessel form categories include open containers (bowls of several sizes, including effigy bowls, carinated bowls, and compound bowls) and restricted containers, including jars and bottles, as well as plates.As restricted containers, jars allow access by hand, but bottles do not (Brown 1996:335).Other form attributes that were recorded 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:Figure 5-30), 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 of any charred organic remains.
Wall Thickness: Thickness was recorded in millimeters, using a vernier caliper, at the lip, along the rim, at several points along the body when possible, 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 vessels includes either smoothing, burnishing, and rarely polishing (Rice 1987:138).Brushing, while a popular method of roughening the surface (particularly the body) of large and small Middle (ca. A.D. 1200-1450) and Late Caddo (ca. A.D. 1450-1680) period cooking jars in several parts of the Caddo area (Perttula 2017), is here 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.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, respectively, is another form of surface treatment noted in many East Texas assemblage.On these vessels, the clay slip is more frequently applied on the vessel exterior, or on both surfaces, than on the interior surface, and then was burnished 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.
Volume: With measurements of height and orifice diameter obtained from the vessels, as well as other measurements of size (i.e., base diameter and maximum body width), volumes were estimated by comparison with known vessel volumes of specific forms (i.e., carinated bowl, jar, bottle, compound bowl, and bowl) in many other recently documented Caddo vessel assemblages.
Base Diameter and Shape: these attributes were either measured in centimeters or by shape attributes: circular or square, and flat, rounded (convex), or concave.
Decoration: Decorative techniques present in the vessel collection include engraving, incising, trailing, punctating, pinching, brushing, and appliquéing, and on certain vessels, combinations of decorative techniques (i.e., incised-punctated) created the decorative elements and motifs.Engraving was done with a sharp tool when the vessel was either leather-hard, or after it was fired, as were the tick marks often seen on vessels in this collection, while the other decorative techniques were executed with tools (trailing, incising, and punctation), by adding strips of clay to the wet body (appliqué), 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, tick marks, or excised punctations.
Use of Pigments: Another form of vessel decoration is the use of red (hematite or ochre) or white (kaolin clay) clay pigments that have been smeared or rubbed into the engraved lines of certain vessels.

Roden Site (41HS14)
The Roden site is on a sandy knoll in the Potters Creek floodplain; Potters Creek is a southwardflowing tributary of the Sabine River (see Webb et al. 1969

Peterson Ranch Site (41HS253)
The Peterson Ranch site (41HS253) is a late 17 th to early 18 th century Caddo cemetery in the Little Cypress Creek basin in the East Texas Pineywoods (Perttula 2015).The cemetery, on a natural knoll on the west side of Gray's Creek, a northern-flowing tributary of Little Cypress Creek, was found and excavated in 1962 by a number of collectors from the Marshall, Texas, area.In 1963 the cemetery area was destroyed by the construction of an oil well pad (Speir n.d.).At least 14 ancestral Caddo burial features were excavated at the cemetery, and a wide range of funerary offerings were included with the deceased individuals, including at least 91 ceramic vessels (Perttula 2015:Table 1).The one ceramic vessel from the site in the TARL collections was donated by Forrest Murphey, a well-known local collector, but it is not known what burial it was found with.

C. T. Coley Site (41TT17)
The ancestral Caddo ceramic vessels from the C. T. Coley site were purchased from the landowner by University of Texas archaeologists (UT) in May 1931.The landowner had plowed up the vessels earlier that year (Thurmond 1990:79) or in 1930 (UT site files) from a sandy knoll overlooking the Hart Creek floodplain in the Big Cypress Creek basin.UT archaeologists returned to the site in 1934 in an attempt to identify Caddo burial features by excavating trenches in the area where vessels had been previously found (and purchased by UT), but none were identified (Goldschmidt 1934).These excavations did recover a single engraved marine shell pendant identical to others from Late Caddo to Early Historic Caddo contexts along the Red River and in East Texas (Perttula et al. 2010:36-38 and Figures 34-35

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Harrison and Titus Counties in East Texas.