Article Title

Ceramic Vessels from Caddo Sites in Wood County, Texas

Authors

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

Agency

Journal of Northeast Texas Archeology

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21112/.ita.2016.1.63

Abstract

This article concerns the documentation of 54 ceramic vessels in the collections of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin (TARL) from seven ancestral Caddo sites in Wood County in East Texas (Figure 1). This includes vessels from A. C. Gibson (41WD1, n=2 vessels), J. H. Reese (41WD2, n=26), H. D. Spigner (41WD4, n=17), Mattie Dial (41WD5, n=2), B. F. Cathey (41WD14, n=2), J. H. Baker (41WD33, n=4), and 41WD117 (n=1 vessel).

The A. C. Gibson site is situated in the floodplain of the Sabine River near the confluence with Cottonwood Creek. In 1932, looters had dig in a midden deposit (with many mussel shells) and exposed one ancestral Caddo burial with two vessels. In 1934, University of Texas archaeologists excavated two more burials (S-1 and S-2) in the midden. Burial S-1 was that of a child, in a flexed position; this burial had no associated funerary offerings. Burial S-2 held two individuals in an extended supine position in an east-west oriented grave. This burial had two ceramic vessels and a rounded elbow pipe as funerary offerings.

The TARL files also indicate that at least three ancestral Caddo burials were excavated by amateur archaeologists prior to the 1970s, and at least one burial had associated ceramic vessels. The nearby Son Gibson Farm site (41WD518) is reported to have had sherds from Sanders Slipped, Sanders Engraved, Canton Incised, and Maxey Noded Redware vessels, and it may be contemporaneous with the burials at the A. C. Gibson site.

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