Cultural Diversity in the Southern Caddo Region

Abstract

The earliest expression of Caddo culture in the southern portion of the Southern Caddo region is well known. That Alto phase Caddo culture had any effect on coeval societies and the subsequent cultural development in the area cannot be demonstrated. What happened after ca. A.D. 1100 has been much discussed, but the realities of that subsequent cultural development are unknown. It can be argued that what followed was a part of a larger cultural phenomenon of regionalization of societies within the broader Caddoan area. Some researchers have argued that. at least in the extreme southern portion of the Caddo area, this localized regionalization reflects adaptations to changing environmental conditions. It can also be argued that the ensuing regionalization, a fact well demonstrated in the archaeological and ethnohistorical literature, may, at least in part, also be a continuation of a long standing ethnoenvironmental and macroeconomic adaptation that is as much Mossy Grove (Woodland) or even Archaic in its outlook as it is Caddo. I have suggested elsewhere a post-Alto phase phenomena of diffusion of some aspects of Caddo culture to Mossy Grove style cultures, an acculturative process that may have been still viable and ongoing in the early Historic period. The ethnographic literature suggests that southern Caddo cultural denota had expanded or was expanding beyond the traditional Hasinai linguistic area. This article addresses the first part of the discussion, the cultural variability evident in the archaeological and ethnohistoric literature and the possible sources of that diversity.