Article Title

Caddo Ceramic Vessels from the Paul Mitchell Site (41BW4) on the Red River, Bowie County, Texas

Authors

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

Agency

Friends of Northeast Texas Archaeology

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21112/ita.2016.1.2

Abstract

The Paul Mitchell site (41BW4) is an ancestral Caddo habitation site and cemetery in the larger ancestral and historic occupation of the Upper Nasoni Village on the Red River in Bowie County, in the northeastern corner of the present state of Texas (Figure 1). Extensive excavations were conducted at the site in the 1930s by both professional and avocational archaeologists, and in the 1940s by an avocational archaeologist. The Paul Mitchell site is located in the McKinney Bayou floodplain about 2 miles from the current channel of the Red River to the north. The site is part of a large Upper Nasoni village believed to have extended several miles along the Red River, likely encompassing contemporaneous sites such as Eli Moores (41BW2), Hatchel (41BW3), Hargrove Moores (41BW39), and Horace Cabe (41BW14). The large platform mound at the Hatchel site is about 1.6 km north of the Paul Mitchell site.

This monograph concerns the documentation of the 145 ceramic vessels placed as funerary offerings in Middle (ca. A.D. 1200–1400) and Late Caddo (ca. A.D. 1400–1690) period burials at the site that are now in the collections of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin (TARL). These vessels were recovered in several phases of 1930s excavations in a large cemetery at the Paul Mitchell site.

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