The Smithport Landing Site is one of a number of village and mound sites
along the Red River valley and its tributaries in northwestern Louisiana
(Fig. 1) at which varying amounts of Alto Focus pottery, whole vessels
or sherds, have been found. The mound sites shown are within the river
flood plain, with exception of Thigpen Mound and Village Site, which are
on a terrace immediately overlooking the valley; Gahagan, Curtis, Mounds
Plantation, and Belcher mounds are on old river channels near the
present stream. The burial vessels at Gahagan were Alto types—five
_Holly Fine Engraved_, three _Hickory Engraved_, one _Kiam Incised_—and
12% of the 76 sherds from the surface are the distinctive Alto types
(_Hickory_, _Carmel_ and _Holly Engraved_, _Davis Incised_, _Crockett
Curvilinear Incised_, _Weches Fingernail Impressed_ and _Pennington
Punctated-Incised_). The Thigpen Site is preponderantly Bossier, but
included in the scant collection of 102 sherds are one _Weches_, five
_Dunkin_, and five _Wilkinson_. We have only a few sherds from the
Curtis Mound (Sunny Point in Moore’s 1912 report) but _Hickory Fine
Engraved_ is included. At the Belcher Mound Site (Webb, 1959) the
premound level had sherds and burial vessels of both Alto and Haley
types.
The Mounds Plantation (Pickett Landing in Moore’s 1912 report) Site has
recently been explored with some intensity (McKinney, Plants and Webb,
to be reported). Twenty-six percent of the decorated sherds in the
previous surface collection were of the distinctive Alto types, 4.15%
Coles Creek. A trench through one of the mounds showed intrusive Belcher
Focus burials but the fill, habitation, and premound level sherds were
Coles Creek and Alto, with admixture at all levels but increasing
amounts of Alto in the top levels. Alto types are _Davis_ and _Harrison
Bayou Incised_; _Hickory_, _Holly_ and _Carmel Engraved_; _Pennington_,
_Crockett_, _Wilkinson_, and _Weches_ in the punctated and
punctated-incised categories. Coles Creek types were _Coles Creek_,
_Chase_ and _Beldeau Incised_; _Rhinehart Punctated_; and the shared
types _Hardy_ and _Sanson Incised_. Deep burials in a second mound had
scant pottery but the two vessels were _Holly Engraved_ and a bowl with
_Crockett_ and _Pennington_ designs, both black and polished.
The non-mound village sites shown in Figure 1 are on hills fronting the
valley or on tributaries and lakes. All of those shown have Alto and
Bossier pottery types, most have Coles Creek-Troyville, all have a good
representation of the shared types _Hardy-Kiam_, _Dunkin-Manchac_,
_Harrison Bayou_ and _Sanson Incised_, _Wilkinson Punctated_, and
_Rhinehart_-atypical, _Pennington Punctated-Incised_. Omitting these
shared types and using only distinctive types, the Allen Site has 7%
Alto, no Coles Creek; the Wilkinson Site has 10.5% Alto, 0.3% Coles
Creek; the Chamarre Site has 14% Alto, 1.5% Troyville; Williams Point
has 4% Alto, no Coles Creek; East Smithport has 8% Alto, no Coles Creek;
the Colbert Place has 1.6% Alto, 5.45% Coles Creek; Greer has 6.7% Alto,
1.8% Coles Creek; Pease and Sinner are strong Bossier sites but have
0.3% and 0.5% Alto, respectively; Swanson’s Landing has 4% Alto and 4%
Coles Creek; and Harrison Bayou has 1% Alto.
Not all of the mound or village sites in this same area show this kind
of representation of Alto or Coles Creek; there are as many or more
which are well developed Bossier sites and have little or no Alto. For
example, we have 230 surface sherds from the Vanceville Mound in Bossier
Parish with no Alto or Coles Creek types; the 3942 sherds from the lower
and premound levels of the Oden Mound include two questionable _Hickory
Engraved_, no other Alto or Coles Creek types; 1275 surface sherds from
the Marston Village Site show no Coles Creek, one _Holly Fine Engraved_,
and three _Pennington Punctated-Incised_. In these same sites, as the
distinctive types drop out, the shared incised and punctated types like
_Dunkin-Manchac_, _Rhinehart-Pennington_ variants, _Wilkinson_,
_Harrison Bayou Incised_ and even _Hardy-Kiam Incised_ are almost
completely replaced by _Pease Brushed-Incised_, _Belcher Ridged_, and
the brushed types (Webb, 1959). Large projectile points and heavy
scraper types also disappear, replaced by small arrow point types and
thumbnail-size, triangular and rectangular flake scrapers (Webb, 1959:
Fig. 126).
The Smithport Landing Site shares with the other hilltop or hill slope
village sites of this earlier Caddoan period the carry-over of late
Archaic dart points, especially types like _Gary_, _Ellis_, _Kent_,
_Carrollton_, _Palmillas_, _San Patrice_, _Evans_, _Maçon_, and
_Pontchartrain_. Large as well as small scrapers, pitted stones, manos
of hand size, oval metates, small drills, large and small celts, brown
and white sandstone hones, hammerstones, and crude choppers are usual at
these sites. Triangular and ovate knives, recurved-edge (_Copena_-like)
knives, stone beads and polished stone problematicals (boatstones,
bannerstones, gorgets) or plummets are all missing or very rare,
although stone beads and problematicals occur in the late Archaic. The
slate bead from Smithport, a recurved (_Copena_) blade fragment from the
Thigpen Site, and a two-hole gorget from a small site north of Wallace
Lake (Webb, 1948: Pl. 16, 9) are exceptions. Small projectile points,
generally of _Alba_ and _Colbert_ types, about equal the number of large
ones at these sites. Ear ornaments, shell and bone tools are infrequent.
In conclusion, the Smithport Landing Site is one of the larger village
sites of the earlier Caddoan (Gibson Aspect, Alto Focus) period along
the Red River valley in northwestern Louisiana. It shares with a number
of other village sites of this period evidences of a carry over of late
Archaic projectile points and stone artifact traits. It also shares with
numerous village and mound sites evidences of admixture of Coles Creek
ceramic types and influences with the Alto pottery types as the earliest
pottery at these sites. It seems increasingly clear that the advent of
Coles Creek and Alto Caddoan peoples and/or ceramics, arrow points, and
riverine mound building into this area were virtually simultaneous
occurrences. Out of this blending developed the subsequent Bossier Focus
ceramics and other cultural manifestations over a wide portion of
northwestern Louisiana, extending into eastern Texas and southern
Arkansas.
It is possible that the large ceremonial mound groups, like Gahagan and
Mounds Plantation, served as ceremonial centers for a number of
villages, including those in the adjoining hill areas, accounting for
the frequency of specialized burials, with ceremonial copper and
polished stone objects, pipes and ornamentation, and highly developed
burial ceramics, in the mound sites, in comparison with the paucity of
these objects in the hill villages.
Considerable research is needed (1) to establish the nature of the
relationships between mound sites in the valleys and the villages in the
hills; (2) to trace the extent of Coles Creek and Alto contacts and the
process of amalgamation of these two strong cultures over the wide area
from central Louisiana into Arkansas, Oklahoma and eastern Texas (this
must have been friendly, as it is inconceivable that Caddoan peoples
would have supplanted Coles Creek almost overnight in hundreds of
villages); (3) and the development out of this amalgamation of Bossier,
Plaquemine, and other later cultures.