Caddo Archaeology

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century the United States acquired many territories from foreign governments. Title to all private land within those territories had to be confirmed. In order to accomplish this task Congress passed numerous acts that dealt with land title from these foreign governments. As a result of these Acts of Congress many reports were issued detailing the claims and claimants in the various regions of the United States. These reports and associates surveys are often quite confusing unless there is some semblance of understanding which acts of congress are responsible for which reports and how the claims appear on plat maps. It is very crucial that terminology on plat maps and within their Tables of Content is known which can be matched to particular reports and claims. It is hoped that the following paper will help with this particular issue in western Louisiana and hopefully the eastern region of the state.

T discuss the function, form, style, and technology of a 15th ami 16th century Titus phase Caddo vessel assemblage from the Mockingbird site (41TT550) in northeast Texas. Differences exist between vessel forms in firing methods, size, ami volume; probable use (as discerned from use wear, sooting, and charred organic remains adhering to vessel surfaces) ; and whether they were decorated, undecorated , and/or covered with a clay-rich slip. Analysis of engraved rims on carinated bowls and compound bowls compares the representation of different motifs at the site to nearby Titus phase cemeteries, as well as to other Titus phase cemeteries on Big Cypress Creek, to examine the broader affiliation of the Caddo peoples living at the Mockingbird site. This vessel assemblage, and others from contemporaneous Caddo socielies, hint at regional differences between Caddo peoples in the treatment of the dead and in Late Caddo (post-A.D. 1400) views on life and death.

This dissertation examines religion as a catalyst for culture change using Indigenous missionary and proselytizing practices as it pertains to the rise of Cahokia (1050-1300 CE). Drawing from Indigenous philosophies and New Materialisms, I use the bundle and bundling concept to hypothesize that the establishment and dissemination of a Cahokia-Mississippian religion is best understood as a bundled mission comprised of missionaries (human and other-than-human), places, things, and substances relationally and co-generating a religious movement. I define the mission bundle as specific practices, places, things, powers, and substances intended for conversion to and proselytizing of a new religious worldview. More specifically, the mission bundle includes mound building, planned cosmological orientations, introductions of new and special architectural styles, and Cahokia-specific materials within religious contexts. Bundling key components of a new religious movement for the purposes of rearranging worldviews and teaching others is an essential aspect of understanding the mechanism of the expansion of a Cahokian-Mississippian religion.

The Collins Complex in East-Central Illinois is the ideal place to investigate the core components of a Mississippian mission bundle. Over 50 years ago, scholars grappled with the mixed data from the Collins Complex. Most often mixed sites were explained using the blanket term “Mississippianization,” which is problematically situated within a cultural evolutionary framework and implies a conversion, but not necessarily a religious one. In the following chapters, I make the case that a mission bundle of identifiable missionary practices was the underlying mechanism fueling a Cahokia-Mississippian religious movement, directly impacting local experiences and larger social landscapes. The value in this project is it provides a nuanced understanding of the establishment of a Cahokia-Mississippian religion and the complex processes of religious change facilitated by missionary practices in precolonial North America. More broadly, this research can inform studies on indigenous missionary practices throughout the Americas.

Ceramic vessels and cosmological structure at first may seem quite unrelated. Many argue the basic and perhaps only function of a pot was a simple human-made container which held foodstuff for cooking and serving purposes. Pre-Contact communities also used ceramics to display complex iconography, some of which may represent important cosmological meanings in time and space. For this paper, I examine the temporal and spatial placement of pottery in 98 Craig Mound burials at the Spiro site in search for cosmological patterns in the imagery of the vessels. Only burials dissociated with the Great Mortuary and the Spirit Lodge were considered, because they have been seriously understudied. Spatial and temporal patterns that emerged from this study suggest burials outside of the Great Mortuary and the Spirit Lodge were also placed in specific areas of the Craig Mound to represent a cosmogram or a ritual display that expressed an important cosmological narrative.

No synthesis of shaft tombs has been done in Caddo archaeology. Compiling a database of shaft tombs in the Caddo world will help to identify temporal, geographical, and demographic patterns.  The goal is to compile the spatial and bioarchaeological data to understand this unique form of burial in southeastern archaeology.

When French explorers first arrived in northwest Louisiana, the local Caddo Indians had already earned a reputation for being important players in the salt trade. Likewise, many western Caddo groups living near the southern Plains were known for their involvement in the horse trade. In the first part of this paper, the relationship between the local salt industry and the introduction of the horse is considered. It is suggested that at least some of the salt made in northwest Louisiana was being fed to horses and other livestock acquired either directly or indirectly from the Spanish. In addition to its potential effect on the salt trade, the introduction of the horse in the southern Plains also spurred an increase in theft and raiding. Historical data suggest that Caddo salt producers may have been worried about such activities from hostile groups like the Osage and Chickasaw. In the second part of this paper, it is argued that these Caddos may have tried to discourage raiding by using salt licks bordered by waterways, by working in close proximity to other salt producers, and by traveling long distances to reach well-protected salt production sites.

Following the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna, the bottomlands of Bois d'Arc Creek, located within the Blackland Prairie of northeastern Texas, became a refuge for Osage Orange (Maclura pomifera, aka bois d'arc). This species, originally propagated by large herbivores, happens to be one of the two best bow woods in the world. By A.D. 1000 the Red River Caddo were making powerful bows of this very rare wood and long-distance traders based at Spiro were transporting these bows to the Plains and the  Mississippi Valley.  In 1691 Spanish horses were accidentally introduced to the Blackland Prairie, creating a rapidly expanding population of horses that began to propagate and disperse Osage orange the way its extinct animal vectors, probably including North American horses, had  originally. The Blackland Prairie then became a generator of two resources vital to the Indians of the Plains during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries:  Osage orange bows and horses.

Résumé/Abstract Regional variation is recognized within the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex and its larger symbolic and ceremonial complexes. In this article we identify and describe a northeastern Texas Caddo style zone centered on engraved rattlesnake representations and other symbols on fine ware ceramic vessels. We explore the use of these icons in a double burial from the late thirteenth to early fifteenth century AD Washington Square Mound Site in Nacogdoches, Texas.

Spiro is one of the most important archaeological sites in North America. At the Sam Noble Museum in Norman, Oklahoma, there are hundreds of unstudied Work Projects Administration (WPA) illustrations that depict artifacts from Craig’s Mound. The study of these WPA drawings has revealed that several of them reflect artifacts that have never been seen since they were initially discovered. These illustrations are significant because they may foster new inferences into Spiro iconography, give back contextual knowledge of the lost artifacts, and provide more comparative resources that will expand on continuing regional analyses across the southeast.

Since its creation, the Harry J. Lemley ceramic artifact collection has been pivotal in the development and refinement of Caddo and Lower Mississippi Valley archaeology. This presentation will recap the importance of the collection to the typology, chronology and archaeology of the Southeast. A discussion will address the collections new research potentials made possible by the ongoing digitization project at the Gilcrease Museum.

Temporal assignments carry substantive weight, and archaeologists regularly assume that artefacts from discrete temporal units may differ in ways that convey changes in preference or behaviour. Similarly, archaeologists regularly assume that raw material differences articulate with stone tool morphology, and the role of differential raw material quality and preference associated with Caddo lithic technology remains largely unexplored. Whether a particular artefact is found in or outside of burial contexts is a sensitive and regularly discussed topic in the archaeological literature, providing valuable insights related to prehistoric burial practices, as well as generational shifts in aesthetics, design, and raw material preferences. These assumptions were tested using geometric morphometrics, yielding results in support of the hypothesis that Perdiz arrow point shape is protean, and that significant differences existed in shape by time, raw material, and burial context.

Study of the similarity of the caps of the female folklore costume of the Balkans, Central Asia and America, as a sign of past migrations and common heritage in design. Mapping and orientation dating of migration routes, and analysis of the symbolic meaning of this cap in folk, indigenous culture.
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Studija sličnosti kapa ženskog folklornog kostima Balkana, Centralne Azije i Amerike, kao znak davnih migracija i zajedničkog nasledja u dizajnu. Mapiranje i orijentaciono datiranje migracionih ruta, i analiza simboličnog značenja ove kape u narodnoj, indiogenoj kulturi. Ključne reči: narodna nošnja, kapa, crveno, jahanje

Summary of results of exploratory excavations at the Tom Jones (3HE40), Hayfield Mound (3HE41) and Plantation (3HE362) sites. Tom Jones and Hayfield proved to be Middle Caddo period mound sites. The Plantation site was  the locus of a significant Late Caddo domestic occupation  followed by an early antebellum occupation, 1820 -1850,  by  Euro Americans associated  with the Grandview Plantation or, quite possibly,  their African slaves.

Throughout the American Southeast, prehistoric and contemporary indigenous groups have practiced ritual acts of wrapping and binding sacred objects, which manifest most clearly in the form of spirit and medicine bundles. Previous researchers have noted the concept of ritual encapsulation in many expressions, such as settlement design, mound building, artifacts, and cosmology. This presentation will discuss the phenomenon of bundling in iconographic motifs and designs present on particular Caddo ceramic bottles. Ceramics presenting iconography in different stages of bundling and their implications on Caddo and Mississippian ideology will be explored.

In 1988 a nineteenth century Spanish settlement was discovered in western Natchitoches Parish. The geographical location of the village was initially determined in 1988 by the discovery of an 1836 plat map showing the location of the Village of Adois. This village is located about two miles southwest of the site of the Los Adaes presidio and slightly to the north of Robeline, Louisiana. Only limited archaeological investigations were conducted due to access restrictions. A brief review of the recovered cultural material is presented. Based on the location and the artifacts recovered it was postulated that this site represents the remains of the Village of Adaes. This was later confirmed by historical documentation.

The term “Arkansas River Basin Caddoan” has been bandied about in recent years as a cultural
taxonomic term for the post-ca. A.D. 800-900 archaeological record in eastern Oklahoma. We find the
term to not be useful for archaeological discourse, and view it as an unfortunate effort to erroneously
link the separate and distinct cultures of the Caddo and Wichita peoples.