The Pearson Site (41RA5) at Lake Tawakoni on the Sabine River, Rains County, Texas

The Pearson site (41RA5) in the Blackland Prairie of East Texas is one of a number of aboriginal archaeological sites recorded during a 1957 archaeological survey of the flood pool of then proposed Lake Tawakoni on the Sabine River; the site is now inundated. The Pearson site was located on several low sandy rises across ca. 25 acres in the Hooker Creek-Sabine River floodplain, and these rises had both aboriginal and European artifacts on the surface. Johnson and Jelks, and Duffield and Jelks have argued that the Pearson site was the Tawakoni-Yscani village visited by a Spanish missionary in 1760 and part of a recently defined Norteno focus, a complex of sites apparently associated with the Wichita tribes. Schambach, by contrast, considers the Pearson site to be an 18th century Tunican entrepot.

Ancestral Caddo Ceramic Vessel Sherds from Sites in the White Oak Creek Basin, Hopkins County, Texas

The ancestral Caddo ceramic vessel sherd assemblages discussed in this article are from five sites in the White Oak Creek basin in the Blackland Prairie of East Texas (Figure 1). They are the E. B. Minter Farm (41HP2), R. H. Taylor Farm (41HP4), Hilman Hathcoat (41HP9), Avery Rasurer (41HP10), and Tom Cannon Farm (41HP11) sites. They were investigated by archaeologists from The University of Texas in 1931 or 1934 who were in search of whole Caddo vessels and burial features, and the collections obtained from the sites (including donated or purchased collections) are held by the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin (TARL). The collections include ceramic vessel sherds from each of the sites, elbow pipes from two of the sites, and a few vessels from the E. B. Minter and R. H. Taylor Farm sites.

A Woodland Period Goose Creek Plain, var. unspecified Sherd from 41WM1382 in Central Texas

41WM1382 is in the Brushy Creek valley in Williamson County, Texas, near the community of Normans Crossing. Brushy Creek is an eastward-flowing tributary of the San Gabriel River in the Blackland Prairie natural region in the Brazos River basin. The site’s principal archaeological deposits date to the Late Archaic period (between ca. 4000-1200 years B.P.), but one ca. A.D. 900-1200 Kiam Incised sherd has been found here (Perttula and Mikulencak 2018).

The Prairie Caddo Model and the J.B. White Site

This article summarizes an hypothesis—called the Prairie Caddo model—presented in a research module published in 2006 to help explain some obvious connections in material culture between Caddo sites in east Texas and sites in central Texas. Harry J. Shafer prepared this module, entitled People of the Prairie: A Possible Connection to the Davis Site Caddo, as an outgrowth in part of excavations that Prewitt and Associates, Inc., performed at the J. B. White site in 2002 for the Texas Department of Transportation. Following the summary of the hypothesis is a synopsis of the results of the excavations at J. B. White and an assessment of the utility of that model for interpreting those results. The excavation data are not consistent with the idea that the people who lived on the Blackland Prairie at the east edge of central Texas between A.D. 1000 and 1300 were Caddo groups who served as a supporting population for the ceremonial center at the George C. Davis site, as the Prairie Caddo model would suggest. Rather, they appear to have been local hunter-gatherers who interacted regularly with the east Texas Caddo. This interaction included providing the Caddo with arrow points and knives, which apparently were highly prized by elites who lived, died, and were buried at the Davis site.