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<< Text Pages >> Kelsey Creek Dam site - Ancient Village or Settlement in United States in The Southwest

Submitted by bat400 on Monday, 04 February 2013  Page Views: 5508

Multi-periodSite Name: Kelsey Creek Dam site
Country: United States Region: The Southwest Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Dallas, TX  Nearest Village: Gilmer, TX
Latitude: 32.763000N  Longitude: 94.982W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
Destroyed Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
4

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Ancient Village or Settlement in Upshur County, Texas.
One of a cluster of Caddo villages along Kelsey Creek. Excavations in the 1990's prior to the building of a dam and reservoir found house sites, ceramics, stone and bone tools, and some burial locations. The burial locations had been looted at some time in the past.

News articles do not identify the time periods associated with the villages along Kelsey Creek, but the Caddo lived in this area between 700AD and the 1600's, and the people at Kelsey Creek are described as pre-conquest.

Human remains and grave goods have been repatriated to the Caddo Nation (Binger, OK.) The other artifacts will be curated at the Stephen F. Austin State University. A paper, "Mitigation Phase Archaeological Investigations at Lake Gilmer, Upshur County, Texas," by Mark Parsons is pending from the Texas State Historical Commission.

Note: Archaeological investigation of Caddo Indians at Kelsey Creek. See comment.
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"Kelsey Creek Dam site" | Login/Create an Account | 1 comment
  
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Archaeological investigation of Caddo Indians nears end by bat400 on Monday, 04 February 2013
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An archaeological project begun in Upshur County two decades ago is nearing completion.

Caddo Indian artifacts excavated from several sites west of Gilmer in the 1990s to make way for Lake Gilmer have been analyzed, photographed and cataloged and are being prepared for display at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, the archaeologist in charge of the project said Friday.

“There are several tens of thousands of items,” said Mark Parsons, who oversaw the excavations in the reservoir basin. Parsons has been in charge of the project as it was transferred from a private company contracted by the City of Gilmer to the Texas Historical Commission.

Studying the finds, which range from small fragments of pottery to arrowheads, tools and pipes to house remains and burial sites, Parsons has spent the past 20 years gaining rare insight into the lives of the Caddos who lived in what is now Upshur County, between approximately 700 A.D. and the mid-15th century.

“These are pre-Spaniards,” Parsons said. “They were the most advanced pre-historic culture that lived in that area. In some senses they were more advanced than we are. They lived in harmony with the environment. They supported themselves and didn’t worry about the world coming to an end the next day. They had very sophisticated religious beliefs. The Caddos were great potters and they made a wide variety of wares,” he said. “Their engraved pottery is perhaps most beautiful.”

The dispersed village uncovered by Parsons and his team was located in what is now known as Kelsey Creek Valley, near where the Lake Gilmer dam was constructed. The building of the lake was the reason for the archaeological survey, which Parsons was involved in from the start.

“The sites we dug were all probably part of a large extended dispersed village where people would live close enough to be in communication but scattered out up and down what’s now called Kelsey Creek,” he said. The crews dug at several sites but two – the Kelsey Creek Dam site and the Rookery Ridge site – were the most productive, Parsons said.

The Caddos’ extended village included farmsteads where one or two families might live, as well as larger hamlets made up of several houses. The houses were circular beehive-shaped structures, he said, made by setting tall slender poles in a circle. The poles were bent together and secured at the top to create a framework that was then covered in thatch. Sometimes they applied clay mud over the thatch to make it more air-tight.

“They were very nice houses and some were quite large,” Parsons said. “They hunted fairly extensively – we found lots of deer bones and other species of animals, but they also ate corn and were pretty sedentary farmers.”

Caddos were renowned as diplomats, he said. “They were famous for their diplomacy, having served as peacemakers among other groups in the area – such as Comanches to the west and Tonkawas in Central Texas.”

Some of the unusual items found included pottery clay balls, Parsons said. Clay was rolled into a rough ball and fired. They also found cigar-shaped lumps of clay the Caddos apparently squeezed in their hands, leaving the marks of fingers.

“We don’t know what they were,” he said. “Perhaps for children – one appeared to be a crude figurine with dots for eyes. I don’t know of anywhere else those have been reported.”

After all the years of poring over the artifacts, Parsons has entered his final phase, preparing items for storage. But first, the hundreds of pages of field notes taken years ago may have to be scanned and copied before storage because the archaeologist discovered some were not taken on the correct paper allowed for curation.

“For curation, all records have to be on acid-free paper,” he said. “Some early work done there was recorded on normal paper. Now, I must go through the records and check page by page to see if it is acid or not.”



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