Article Title

Prehistoric Artifact Assemblages from Sites along Hickory Creek in the Davy Crockett National Forest, Houston County, Texas

Authors

Timothy K. Perttula, Heritage Research Center, Stephen F. Austin State UniversityFollow
Bo Nelson, Heritage Research Center, Stephen F. Austin State UniversityFollow

Agency

Friends of Northeast Texas Archaeology

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21112/ita.2009.1.15

Abstract

The National Forests and Grasslands (U.S.D.A. Forest Service) in Texas (NFGT) conducted Passports in Time (PIT) projects in 2006 and 2007 on Hickory Creek in the Davy Crockett National Forest, Houston County, Texas. The work—varying in extent—took place at four prehistoric archeological sites: 41HO13, HC-1, Hickory Creek #2 (HC-2), and HC-3, with the majority of the work occurring at HC-2.

We learned of the PIT projects at the sites in April 2007, when John Ippolitto, then Heritage Program Manager for the NFGT, mentioned the project to Perttula at the Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology held in Austin, Texas. Ippolitto told Perttula that the NFGT was working on a prehistoric Caddo site that had been previously looted (the looting had been discovered by a district archeologist for the NFGT in 2005; Barbara J. Williams, 2009 personal communication), and that the site contained a large number of Caddo pottery sherds of an unknown age. Perttula expressed an interest in learning more about the site, given work he was involved in elsewhere in the Neches River basin of East Texas, and offered his time in assisting with the analysis of the recovered artifacts.

Nothing more was heard from the NFGT for more than a year about the site or the collections, by which time Barbara J. Williams had taken over as the Heritage Program Manager of the NFGT. In the fall of 2008, Perttula contacted Williams about the Hickory Creek sites PIT project, and after some discussion, the NFGT agreed to turn over the collections and available notes/records (from, as it turned out, four separate sites along Hickory Creek) in February 2009 to Perttula for the purposes of completing a volunteer analysis of these collections and preparing a report on the analytical findings. This report represents the findings of the analysis of the prehistoric artifacts recovered from the HC- 1, Hickory Creek #2 (HC-2), HC-3, and 41HO13 sites during the 2006 and 2007 PIT projects.

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