Article Title

The Joe M. Smith Collection from the Roseborough Lake Site (41BW5), Bowie County, Texas

Authors

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

Agency

Journal of Northeast Texas Archeology

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21112/.ita.2014.1.34

Abstract

The Joe M. Smith collection is held by the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin. It appears to have been given by Mr. Smith to A. T. Jackson in the early 1930s, around the time of The University of Texas excavations at the nearby Eli Moores site (41BW2). The collection is said to have come from the Rochelle Plantation, which is an earlier name for the Roseborough Lake site (41BW5). The Roseborough Lake site is on an old meander of the Red River “that was cut off in 1872 and named Roseborough Lake." It lies a few miles west of other important Caddo sites, a few miles west of Texarkana in Bowie County.

The Roseborough Lake site is a large historic Caddo village occupied from the 17th century until the late 18th century, with habitation features and cemeteries. It also is the location of a Nassonite post established by the French in the 1720s, known by the Spanish as San Luis de Cadohadacho.

Investigations at the Roseborough Lake site by Miroir and Gilmore recovered Historic Caddo ceramics, mainly shell-tempered, of the types Emory Punctated-Incised, McKinney Plain, Keno Trailed, Simms Engraved, Natchitoches Engraved, Womack Engraved, and Avery Engraved, along with brushed, incised, punctated, and red-slipped body sherds and clay figurines and pipes. The chipped stone tool assemblage included Fresno and Maud arrow points, drills, large knives, many end/side scrapers, as well as a diorite celt. European trade goods are particularly abundant at the Roseborough Lake site, and they include iron axes and scrapers, iron bridle bits and knives, iron strike-a-lights, scissors, iron kettle pieces, pendants, many flintlock gun parts, gunflints, lead balls, brass rings, tinklers, bells, and rivets, brass and iron arrow points, metal buttons, green wine bottle glass and mirror glass, faience, majolica, and delft ceramics, along with many glass beads (n=2958) and shell beads (n=18). Substantial samples of animal bones are also present in the archaeological deposits at the site, along with carbonized maize cob fragments.

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