The Archaeology of the Caddo

10. Caddo in the Saline River Valley of Arkansas: The Borderlands Project and the Hughes Site

288 10. Caddo in the Saline River Valley of Arkansas The Borderlands Project and the Hughes Site mary beth trubitt Introduction Recent Caddo archaeology emphasizes the diversity in Caddo lifeways from one river valley to another across a broad region as well as transformations that took place through historical time. For example, Ann Early (2000:127) points to regional “variations on the common Caddo theme” that probably have roots before contact rather than being solely repercussions of historic era interactions with other Native and non-Native groups during the Historic Caddo period. Timothy K. Perttula (1996, 2008) highlights temporal trends with more intensive use of maize and more successful agriculture after A.D. 1400 (see also Wilson, chap. 4, this volume), resulting in sociopolitical changes, shifts in ritual behavior , a lessened reliance on elites, and a reduced social hierarchy. Regional variation and the nuances of differences or connections between communities may be identified in more recent centuries by information on dialects spoken or kin ties connecting Caddo peoples. Reconstructing these cultural patterns is more difficult for the distant past using only the archaeological record and material remains. While ceramic forms and decorations do show variation from river valley to river valley across the Caddo area, pottery vessels—or goods in pots— were traded between communities and between different linguistic and cultural groups. Artifact types may be problematic as ethnic indicators. If the presence of certain pottery types are taken as an indication of Caddo cultural affiliation, what do we do with “the recurring presence of apparently pan-regional (if not pan-cultural or multicultural) very late shell-tempered ceramic types such as Cowhide Stamped, Foster TrailedIncised , and Keno Trailed” (Jeter and Early 1999:60)? Kidder (1992, 289 1993, 1998) has emphasized that pottery shows evidence of interaction and exchange between the Caddo and lower Mississippi valley areas during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and argues that Caddo ceramics were traded into non-Caddo communities such as the Keno, Glendora, and Jordan sites in northern Louisiana. In several articles, Perttula (2002; Perttula et al. 2001) has taken the issue of trade in Caddo ceramics head-on by applying instrumental neutron activation analysis to Caddo sherds from northeast Texas and elsewhere to find out where pots originated. This chapter will address this issue of regional variation using material culture and archaeological remains from a Late Caddo period mound site in the Saline River Valley borderlands, with comparisons to sites in the middle Ouachita River valley as well as the Arkansas River valley in central Arkansas. First of all, I need to clarify that there are actually two Saline Rivers in Arkansas: a smaller western one that forms the boundary between modern Howard and Sevier Counties, joins the Little River, and drains south into the Red River; and a larger eastern one that heads in modern Garland and Saline Counties, flows toward the southeast through Grant and Cleveland Counties, forms a boundary between Drew, Bradley, and Ashley Counties, and drains into the Ouachita River in the Felsenthal area near the southern border of the state. It is this eastern Saline River that is the setting for this discussion. This eastern Saline River in Arkansas is generally depicted as the eastern edge of the Caddo area or outside it altogether (for example, Jeter and Williams 1989:figs. 17–21; Perttula 1996:fig. 1; Rogers and Sabo 2004:fig. 1). The Saline River valley has been described as a “borderlands ” or boundary zone between the trans-Mississippi South and lower Mississippi valley archaeological areas and between Caddo and Mississippian cultures in these respective areas. It also falls at the borders of Arkansas Archeological Survey research station territories and has not seen much focused research (Jeter and Early 1999). Recent archaeological fieldwork at the Hughes site (3SA11) is one by-product of renewed attention on the Saline River valley that my colleague Marvin Jeter has termed the “Borderlands Project.” Recent Archaeology at the Hughes Site Hughes (3SA11) is a Caddo mound center located in the Saline River valley near the boundary of the West Gulf Coastal Plain and Ouachita Mountains physiographic regions (fig. 10-1). Placed on the National Caddo in the Saline River Valley 290 Register of Historic Places in 1985, the site was deemed significant for its potential to contribute to an understanding of Late Caddo and protohistoric Caddo social and ceremonial systems, settlement patterning and economic organization...