The Archaeology of the Caddo

The Archaeology of the Caddo. TIMOTHY K. PERTTULA and CHESTER P. WALKER (eds.). University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2012. xvi, 516 pp., illus., maps, index. $60.00 (paper), ISBN: 978-0-8032-2096-6.The Archaeology of the Caddo covers an impressive scope of Caddo-related topics. Pulling from research conducted throughout the northern and southern Caddo areas-covering a five-state region, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas-the volume provides an amalgam of current methodological and theoretical underpinnings from 17 authors.Perttula's introduction provides an overview of geography, cultural structure, and chronology, couching the chapters within an objective framework. He offers that the archaeology of the Caddo-to many- remains ill understood, citing its rare mention in more accessible publications, the lack of a modern synthesis, and the unfortunate fact that the majority of projects that incorporate Caddo components appear relegated to technical reports with limited distribution. In highlighting discernible sociopolitical and trade relationships, Perttula makes it a point to clarify that the emergence of the Caddo occurred independent of the Mississippian cultural tradition during the ninth century A.D., replacing Woodland era Fourche Maline, Mill Creek, and Mossy Grove populations.Early's chapter offers an agency-based discussion regarding the form and structure of Caddo ceramic design, providing a concise and useful overview prior to making her case for the integration of the "sophisticated and nonrepresentational ceramic decorative tradition" (p. 26) within research designs aimed at broader aspects of Caddo culture. Basing her argument upon Friendship Engraved var. Freeman, she proposes a logical progression of potential decision-making processes made by the ceramicist to achieve the decorative elements of this ceramic type. Utilizing a study focused on the social foundations of historic Hasinai Caddo leadership in East Texas (pp. 45-46), Early contends that research incorporating discussions of ceramic technological organization can profitably augment questions aimed at addressing aspects of Caddo culture that point toward regional identity, and the broader confederacy as a whole.In the subsequent chapter, Jackson et al. discuss the departure of the Caddo at Crenshaw from traditional dietary patterns, offering an argument for differing recipes and meal preparation couched within an exploration of ethnicity, social class, and ritual purity. These revelations highlight factors that might be attributed to food production in complex societies, with particular attention paid to the elements of procurement, preparation, and consumption that might yield clues helping to expand future arguments based upon cosmological relations, inequality, and social solidarity.In her chapter on the bioarchaeology of the Caddo, Wilson uses dental wear, dental caries, and bone chemistry to illustrate significant differences in the diet of the Texas Caddo, an increase in maize production in the later sequence, and that variability was the norm in Caddo diet and subsistence strategies, citing analytical results of isotopic signatures and the amount of maize consumed. She concludes that maize in East Texas precedes other Caddo regions, noting however, that differences such as these should be expected within complex societies like that of the Caddo.Through the use of ethnographic analogy and ethnohistoric resources, Brown advances his notion of Spiro as a devotional economy, where the Great Mortuary enjoyed strong outside connections. He suggests that the "object of allurement" is itself an artifact produced with the intent of influencing events in an attempt to affect social change, where interments reflect an expression of the collective or corporate identity of an energetic leadership that used the Great Mortuary as a means of attracting a population to Spiro.Through their employment of GIS and archaeogeophysics, Vogel (Chapter 6), Walker and McKinnon (Chapter 7), Lockhart (Chapter 11), and Brooks (Chapter 12) offer novel methods of exploring viewsheds from mound centers, community organization, spatial patterning of Caddo mound sites, and the decision-making process involved in settlement choice. …