By Bill Young
Corsicana Daily Sun
— Many years ago, this was a slogan found on the back of many Ford pickups and cars. My memory may not be exactly correct because it might have said Built in Texas instead of Made in Texas. I always thought it bespoke of just how we feel about being born and raised in Texas. It was the largest state back then and needless to say, we had bragging rights, boy did we! In 1970 when I first got involved in archeology, you could almost sense this same feeling when we looked at the books from Texas dealing with typology.
There were a few points, especially those considered to be the oldest, which were not originally found in Texas but there were examples of each type occasionally found within our borders. The names of those particular cultures are Clovis, Folsom, Scottsbluff, Agate Basin and Hell Gap. Since we considered those early cultures to be hunters of what is now known as extinct animals such as mammoth and the larger bison, there wasn’t a problem with their projectile points and tools being found in Texas. We knew we had two of the most popular quarries, Alibates and the Edwards Plateau, which had to be drawing cards bringing in cultures from other states. However, over in deep East Texas, we had something of an enigma. The culture known as San Patrice was recognized in both Louisiana and Texas but we did not have dates nor did we know what these people hunted. The general consensus about the age of San Patrice was about the same as Folsom or slightly newer in time since the typical San Patrice is fluted. Actually the flutes on San Patrice are more like the typical flute found on Clovis because the flutes are short going usually less than halfway up the blade while the typical flute on a Folsom goes all the way to the tip of the point.
East Texas being almost totally void of any decent chert also affected the materials utilized by the San Patrice people. They were willing to make points and tools out of pieces of petrified wood which doesn’t work very well but they also acquired higher quality cherts from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Central Texas. Evidence of this is found on many sites containing San Patrice artifacts.
Now in recent years, we have discovered projectile points showing up on sites in East Texas and here in North Central Texas which are not native to these areas. You will not find examples of these in any of the current typology books published about Texas artifacts. You will have to look up these points in several publications I mentioned a few weeks ago or you might be able to acquire one or both of the volumes published by Gregg Perino. He published Volume One of “The Artifacts of the Native Americans” in the mid-1980s and shortly thereafter he published Volume Two. I may not have the title correct so be prepared to look for any variation of what I listed above. Occasionally one or the other books becomes available either in a used book store or on one of the Internet book companies.
If I had not recently acquired the book I mentioned a few weeks ago, “Archaic Societies: Diversity And Complexity Across The Midcontinent,” I would be trying my best to force some of the projectile points in the Buddy Jones collection into some of the Texas typology system. There wasn’t such a thing as a border between what we now call Texas and any other neighboring state. If they could get across the river, especially the Red River, other societies came here for a variety of reasons. We know for sure the Caddos were trading bois d’arc wood to other groups, used for bows and arrows, in the past 1,500 years. In turn they were receiving hides, cherts and maybe even mates. Caddo pottery has been found as far west as the Brazos River but we are not sure if this represents a trade item or direct evidence of the annual migration made by the Caddo to Central Texas solely for the purpose of hunting buffalo or trading with central Texas people such as the Lipan Apaches.
Most of the out-of-state projectile points I am seeing in the Buddy Jones collection date to the Late Paleo and Early Archaic time periods. This probably is an indicator of just how mobile these early groups were in wandering over the landscape. Later on as populations grew, there is pretty good evidence the Middle and Late Archaic societies were beginning to settle into a much smaller area. This was brought on by the advent of agriculture plus a better understanding of what edible food supplies would be found growing locally. They also were utilizing smaller animals, fish and mussels in their regular diet supplement with larger mammals such as deer and bison. Some sites, where bone preservation is fair to good, yield evidence of consumption of several different varieties of snakes. If it could walk, crawl or swim, it was fair game for the food pot. Certain grasses produce edible seeds usually in the fall along with nuts, tubers and berries. We don’t know and I sincerely doubt we will be able to find good evidence of any of the above items listed as a trade item. We might assume, especially in the case of the Caddos, food items were traded occasionally in years where there was an abundance of grown foods.
On the other hand, the issue is still out as to whether they traded finished projectile points and formal tools. I personally believe they may have traded good chert for items they needed but I cannot think they traded projectile points for food or hides. I am basing my decision on the fact it takes time to make a really nice stone projectile point. Failures during any of the bi-facing stages are commonly found on sites indicating not every piece of chert produced a finished product. Typically we find three or four failures to one completed point and the ratio is even higher when we recover complete finished points versus broken points and unfinished bifaces. With this in mind, projectile points normally found in states north of Texas got here due to groups migrating here for some reason. Environmental changes, population growths, the desire to discover new areas and the establishment of trade routes are a few reasons I can think of but obviously there are other reasons they came into a new region.
Next week: Illustrations of some of those out-of-state points
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Bill Young is a Daily Sun columnist. Want to “Soundoff” on this column? E-mail: soundoff@corsicanadailysun.com
