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5. Fourche Maline: A Woodland Period Culture of the Trans-Mississippi South
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Chapter 5 Fourche Maline: A Woodland Period Culture of the Trans-Mississippi South Frank Schambach The Woodland period culture of the large part of the Trans-Mississippi South lying south of the Arkansas Valley in western Arkansas, eastern Oklahoma, northwest Louisiana, and northeast Texas (Figure 5.1) is called Fourche Maline culture. The most informative components of this culture are at sites in the Ouachita and Red River valleys in southwest Arkansas (Schambach 1982, 1998b; W. R. Wood 1963b; W. R. Wood and Early 1981). However, the culture also includes the Woodland period remains from the sites of the original Fourche Maline “focus” and the more recently formulated Fourche Maline “phase” (Wann, Sam, Scott, Williams, and McCutchanMcLaughlin ) in the Ouachita Mountains in southeastern Oklahoma (R. Bell and Baerreis 1951; Galm 1984). In northwest Louisiana, it includes the assemblages and mounds of the Woodland period “Bellevue focus” (C. Webb 1982) and the “Coles Creek” assemblages from Late Woodland–Early Mississippi period sites such as Mounds Plantation (C. Webb and McKinney 1975). In east Texas, Fourche Maline assemblages are recognizable in the materials reported from sites as far west in the Red River valley as the Sanders site (Krieger 1946:171–99; Story 1990:302) and as far southwest as the George C. Davis site (Newell and Krieger 1949). This populous culture (for southwest Arkansas alone we have records of about 700 sites with Fourche Maline components) materialized between 1000 and 500 B.C., lasted until around 800 A.D., then evolved into Caddo culture. Its hallmark throughout these thirteen to eighteen centuries was a robust, but mostly plain, ceramic assemblage consisting mainly of flat-bottomed , often flowerpot-shaped, jars tempered with crushed bone, grit, sand, or grog. The main types in this assemblage are Williams Plain, Cooper Boneware, and Ouachita Plain (Schambach 1998b). Other artifact types diagnostic of—but generally not limited to—Fourche Maline culture that were in vogue for significant parts of its long life are the following: Gary projectile points of several regionally and temporally significant varieties; arrow points of several types; coarsely chipped stone tools traditionally called 92 Schambach Figure 5.1 — Important sites in and around the Fourche Maline culture area 1. Alexander 2. Bellevue 3. Bowman 4. Bug Hill 5. Cicero Young 6. Cooper 7. Coral Snake 8. Crenshaw 9. Ernest Witte 10. Ferguson 11. Fine 12. Folly 13. Gahagan 14. Gasfield 15. George C. Davis 16. Haddens Bend 17. Harlan 18. Hurricane Hill 19. James Pace 20. Johnny Ford 21. Jonas Short 22. Mahaffey 23. Martin 24. McCutchan-McLaughlin 25. McKinney 26. Means 27. Mounds Plantation 28. Old Martin 29. Point Remove 30. Poole 31. Ray 32. Red Hill 33. Resch 34. Sam 35. Sanders 36. Scott 37. Shane’s Mound 38. Sheffield 39. Spinach Patch 40. Spiro 41. Toltec 42. Wann 43. Wheatley 44. Williams 45. Zebree [3.230.147.225] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 13:22 GMT) Fourche Maline: A Woodland Period Culture of the Trans-Mississippi South 93 double-bitted “axes,” but which probably were hoe-like gardening tools; boatstones; modeled-clay platform pipes; similar clay pipes called Poole pipes; and remarkably abundant stone seed grinding and nut processing equipment (Schambach 1982, 1998b). The Fourche Maline people had a distinctive burial mound tradition (Schambach 1996a) but, unlike their Coles Creek and Plum Bayou neighbors to the east in the Lower Mississippi Valley, they had no flat-topped mound, or temple mound, tradition. They probably had a horticultural tradition based on the eastern North American starchy and oily seed complex. Their settlement pattern included small villages occupied, possibly continuously , for long periods, producing many 0.8- to 2.0-hectare sites with characteristically deep, black, middens rich in cultural debris and full of flexed or extended burials, some with modest offerings (Schambach 1982). The larger sites often yield small amounts of imported pottery of Tchefuncte, Marksville, and Coles Creek types, evidence of contact of some kind with peoples of the Lower Mississippi Valley for more than a thousand years (Schambach 1982, 1991, 1998b). Remarkably, Fourche Maline seems to have been a culture that got by until nearly the end without stone celts, hence also without houses substantial enough to show up archaeologically (Schambach 1982:178, 185). It was a culture that did not use storage pits, which is one reason it is so difficult to obtain charcoal samples and data pertaining to diet from good contexts at Fourche Maline sites (Schambach 1982:184). On the other hand, the Fourche Maline people...