Caddo Ceramic Assemblages from Sites in the Ayish and Palo Gaucho Bayou Basins, San Augustine County, Texas

Abstract

In 1939 and 1940, G. E. Arnold recorded a number of archaeological sites in and around San Augustine, in East Texas, as part of a Works Progress Administration-funded (WPA) archaeological survey of East Texas. The eight sites of concern in this article are in either the Ayish Bayou or Palo Gaucho Bayou basins; the former is a southward-flowing tributary to the Angelina River, while the latter is a southeast-flowing tributary to the Sabine River. In several instances, depending upon the circumstances, Arnold was able to collect substantial numbers of ancestral Caddo ceramic and lithic artifacts from several of these sites. The character of these ceramic sherds—and their stylistic and technological similarities or differences to the ceramic assemblages from the 1716-1719, 1722-1773 Mission Dolores de los Ais in San Augustine as well as other known sites on Palo Gaucho and Housen bayous and Attoyac Bayou are the primary focus of the analysis reported on herein, but other temporally diagnostic ceramic and lithic artifacts are discussed as well.