Louisiana Limitrophe: A Morphological Exegesis of Caddo Bottle Shape

The analysis adduces 72 Caddo bottles from 19 sites to test the hypothesis of distinct bottle morphologies associated with sites north and south of the shape boundary from within the spatial extent of the preceding Fourche Maline and Mossy Grove culture areas. This analysis was followed by additional tests to identify whether a difference in Formative/Early and Late/Historic Caddo bottle shapes occurs between and among the northern and southern Caddo groups in the southern Caddo area. Other tests include whether bottle shape varies with size, whether the null hypothesis of parallel slopes for Formative/Early and Late/Historic Caddo bottles is supported or rejected, and whether any group displays greater shape or size variation among individuals relative to other groups.

Middle Caddo Whole Vessels from the Ferguson Site (3HE63)

The Ferguson site (3HE63) is a Caddo ceremonial center in Hempstead County, Arkansas. The Arkansas Archeological Survey and Arkansas Archeological Society excavated Ferguson between 1972 and 1974, under the direction of Dr. Frank Schambach. The site has a middle Caddo Haley phase (A.D. 1200- 1400) component consisting of two mounds, several structures, and a small cemetery area, set atop a 2-acre Woodland period Fourche Maline village. One of the mounds included several elite Caddo shaft graves rich with ceramic artifacts. My recent research with Ferguson site collections included a metric and stylistic analysis of whole vessel ceramics from the Haley phase Caddo components. This paper reports on some results of this inventory and analysis.

The Decorated Ceramic Sherds, Plain Rim Sherds, and Clay Pipe Sherds from the Stallings Ranch Site (41LR297), Lamar County, Texas

Excavations at the Gene and Ruth Ann Stallings Ranch site (41LR297) during the 2005 and 2006 Texas Archeological Society Field Schools, as well as 2004 excavations by the Valley of the Caddo Archeological Society, recovered an interesting assemblage of prehistoric ceramics. In this article, I analyze the 88 decorated sherds, the 99 plain rims, and the 67 clay pipe sherds found during that work. In addition to characterizing the assemblage of vessel sherds and pipes in terms of decorative style and various technological attributes (i.e., temper and paste, firing conditions, surface treatment, etc.), I am also concerned with establishing the temporal and cultural affiliation of the recovered ceramics, particularly with respect to determining whether the ceramics found at the Stallings site are primarily from a Fourche Maline Woodland period occupation or a later, post-A.D. 800 Caddo ancestral occupation.

Towards a Common Understanding: A Revision of Forurche Maline Chronology in Oklahoma

Answering the question of what Fourche Maline is has long been hampered by lack of consensus on the terminology and chronology within the ancestral Caddoan area of the four corners area of southeast Oklahoma, southwest Arkansas, northeast Texas and northwest Louisiana. To address this problem an evolution of the Oklahoma concept of Fourche Maline is presented, and developing a new chronology based on seriation of temporally sensitive artifact categories is discussed. It is concluded that Fourche Maline is a solely Woodland period culture, with a chronology that makes identifying changes over time possible. This conclusion will facilitate the understanding of Fourche Maline within the Caddon homeland.

The Development of the Burial Mound Tradition in the Caddo Area

This is a significantly revised version of a paper I presented at the 1994 East Texas Archeological Conference in Tyler, Texas. The gist of that paper was that the origins of the burial mound tradition in the Caddo area can be traced, not to the Coles Creek culture in the Lower Mississippi Valley as the conventional wisdom would have it, but to an independent Fourche Maline mound building tradition that developed in and around the Red River Valley beginning about 100 B.C.2 I still think that there was an independent Fourche Maline mound building tradition and I still think that, as I tried to show in my conference presentation, the earliest mounds at the earliest Caddo ceremonial center we know of, Mounds D and C at the Crenshaw site, were constructed in that tradition. As I will show in this paper, it is clear that the Crenshaw mounds were not "Coles Creek" mounds. But in the three years since my conference presentation, I have changed my interpretation of the slightly later, late Fourche Maline period, full-fleshed, group burials that were also found in Mound Cat Crenshaw. These are the earliest graves found so far at any Caddo site that seem to be clearly in the tradition of the distinctive, high status "shaft tomb" burials of early Caddo culture in the Red River Valley. In my original presentation I argued that these graves, and hence the early Caddo mound burial tradition, could be derived from the old Fourche Maline burial mound tradition. But since then I have come to consider that argument unconvincing and untenable. The new argument I offer here is that the stimulus for the early Caddo mound burial pattern did indeed come from outside the Caddo Area, as many archeologists have suggested, but it was not from Coles Creek culture as has commonly been supposed. I now think that these graves indicate the point in time when powerful influences from the "Emergent Mississippian" cultures to the northeast of the Caddo Area, perhaps from Cahokia itself, were beginning to transform the centuries-old Fourche Maline burial mound tradition into the essentially Mississippian early Caddo burial mound tradition. This transition must have entailed not just changes in the Fourche Maline burial mound tradition but also basic changes in the structure and importance of the elite stratum, if such there was, in Fourche Maline society itself. Thus, these graves would reflect an early stage in the transformation, under Emergent Mississippian influence, of the evidently still quite weakly developed elite social stratum in late Fourche Maline society into the well defined elite stratum that seems to have dominated early Caddo society; i.e., the social elite responsible for the deep, richly accoutered shaft tombs that were emplaced in mounds at all the important early Caddo ceremonial centers. So in this paper I will first attempt to isolate and describe the old Fourche Maline burial mound tradition. Then I will try to show that the earliest mounds at Crenshaw were built in that tradition. Finally, I will try to show how that tradition was interrupted and significantly altered around A.D. 800, and I will argue that the Emergent Mississippians were behind this transition.

Coles Creek Culture and the Trans-Mississippi South

Certain Lower Mississippi Valley (LMV) traits, mostly Coles Creek ceramic traits, but also traits such as temple mounds and certain mortuary patterns, appear at Late Fourche Maline and Early Caddo sites in the Trans-Mississippi South, particularly at sites in the Red River Valley in northwest Louisiana and southwest Arkansas. Explaining how these traits got there and understanding their role in the development of Caddo culture is one of the basic problems in the archaeology of this area. The conventional explanation has long been that they represent a full scale intrusion of Coles Creek culture into the Trans-Mississippi South. Thus Michael Hoffman has created a Crenshaw phase of Coles Creek culture in the Great Bend region of the Red River Valley in southwest Arkansas, and Clarence H. Webb attributed the initial major occupation at the Mounds Plantation site in northwest Louisiana to "Coles Creek peoples" who "laid out the plaza, possibly constructed Mound 2 as a quadrilateral temple substructure, and--at the opposite end of the plaza--established a burial area where Mound 5 sits."

An Assessment of the Fourche Maline Culture and Its Place in the Prehistory of Northeast Texas

This paper is based on the works of many authors who have investigated and written upon archaeological materials involving pre-Caddo cultures that existed in the Caddo Area, west of the Mississippi River. I will be concentrating on one particular archaeological manifestation known as the Fourche Maline Culture, which existed perhaps as early as 500 B.C. and ended sometime during the 2nd millenium A.D. The origins of the Fourche Maline Culture are still not well understood, however, it can be stated with some assurance that it was an in-place development occurring somewhere within the Caddo Area. How far widespread was this culture? Some researchers believe that the Fourche Maline Culture was ubiquitous throughout the Caddo Area in the states of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas.

The Scott Site, Le Flore County, Oklahoma

Although considerable archaeological excavation has been conducted throughout eastern Oklahoma during the past fifteen years, it is only recently that attempts have been made to present a chronological framework for the area (Orr, 1946; Krieger, 1946, 1947; Newell and Krieger, 1949; Bell and Baerreis, 1951). Within this framework of prehistory, the latter portions such as those represented by the Gibson and Fulton aspects are probably the best understood. "With a single exception (Baerreis, 1951), the earlier cultures remain relatively incognito. One of these early cultures is commonly referred to as Fourche Maline. Unfortunately, however, the Fourche Maline materials remain to be clearly described and identified.