Article Title

The Harling Site (41FN1): An Ancestral Caddo Mound Site on the Red River in Fannin 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.2015.1.62

Abstract

The Harling site (41FN1), also earlier known as the Morgan Place, is a little-known ancestral Caddo mound site located on the first alluvial terrace of the Red River in the northeastern corner of Fannin County in East Texas. The only professional archaeological investigations at the Harling site took place in November-December 1960 by a University of Texas crew led by Dr. E. Mott Davis, in advance of proposed mound leveling by the landowner. Other than short summary articles by Davis, the results of the excavations and analyses of the recovered artifacts from the Harling site have not been previously published. The mound at the site was leveled in 1963 by the landowner, Mr. R. A. Harling.

The single mound at the site was approximately 70 x 52 x 2.1 m in length, width, and height. There was a borrow pit area at the southern end of the mound.

The mound at the Harling site appears to be the westernmost known of the more than 100 Caddo mounds that have been reported in East Texas. According to Davis (1996:463), the site is on the western frontier of Caddo communities in the Red River valley, and Caddo settlements are found at most only a few miles to the west of the site along the river, but are common to the east of the Harling mound. Based on the 1960 excavations of the mound and an examination at that time of the surrounding alluvial landforms—which were plowed—there was no substantial Caddo settlement at the Harling site, or any associated settlement cluster within ca. 2.5 km of the mound, although there were scattered artifacts from the surface dispersed both east and west of the mound.

When R. L. Stephenson, E. O. Miller, and Lester Wilson visited the Harling site in August 1950, however, they commented that artifacts were abundant in the plowed fields around the mound. In particular they noted that the ceramic sherds were mostly plain and grog-tempered, and some of the sherds had a red slip (i.e., Sanders Plain). R. King Harris also collected artifacts from the site, primarily from an area to the west of the mound and near the edge of the alluvial terrace . He collected from this area W Gary dart points, Alba arrow points, plain sherds, and one Coles Creek Incised rim with an incised lip line. In the fields east of the mound, Harris collected a number of small triangular arrow points, suggesting that this area was where the latest Caddo occupation had taken place.

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