In Your Own Backyard #6
Archeology of Acadiana

Dr. Mark Reese, Archeologist
People have been living in Louisiana for 12,000 years.
Time periods archeologist have put together:
Paleo-Indian first peoples of North America, dating to about 10,00BC

Archaic- Louisiana was where it was happening, lower Mississippi Valley, things that were going on that were unprecedented in North and South America, i. e. mound building, monuments building, 3500-4,000BC

The Woodland-people making ceramic, building mounds

Mississippian Period

Historic Period-1700AD to present
All dates are approximate.
Archeology is about the study of any undocumented past both prehistoric and historic. How people lived in the past, about things, artifacts. Archeology started when people started collecting stuff /artifacts to put in museums. Its about interpreting people’s lives in the past, their histories, their cultures, their economies. Where people lived and when they lived there are basic questions of archeology. There is evidence that Native Americans were living along the Vermillion River in 10,000 BC. We have only a sketchy picture of where they lived and what they were doing.
Recorded archeological sites are those places that bear some evidence of past human presence whether it was an over night camp or a community lived there for a hundred years or a thousand years. Lafayette parish has the most sites per ten square miles. Vernon parish has 3,604 sites, 20% of all sites in the state.
(9:44):Interest is not enough: Not all digging is archaeology if it is only about the collection of things it is not archaeology. If you have not recorded where the item came from no one knows and there is no link to the past or knowledge about the people who made and used the item. Record the site with the Louisianan Division of Archeology so that some one knows about the site.
(12:41): Berwick Mounds -according to James Cathcart- he talks about four mounds, the origin of which is veiled because of the lapse of time, were situated at right angles, flat topped platform mounds, the largest of which was about thirty feet high. He believes they were the work of Attakapas Indians. Reese says unlikely, probably the Chitimacha work. One can imagine what mounds looked like by comparing them to Troyville in Jonesville. We don’t know anything about the site other than Cathcart’s description. The only thing remaining is a street named Mound Street.
(16:38): Fairview Plantation mounds were recently destroyed for a residential neighborhood.
(16:57): Lafayette airport mounds that are seen from the river are not Indian mounds but a natural landform. There were Indian mounds at the airport but they have been destroyed with the building of the airport. There are other mounds in Lafayette that have been destroyed—there was one off Pinhook that is now part of a neighborhood. The growth of Lafayette has destroyed Indian mounds. There is a lesson for the future—shouldn’t we care before we destroy.
(21:42) How should we deal with cultural resources that are in the way of progress. Progress is often elevated as if it were purely economical. Progress is inevitable—it’s going to happen, it is often pitted against cultural resources/heritage. We should make what we value as part of progress.
There are over 700 mound sites in the state, most are privately owned.
(26:28): Ancient Mounds Heritage trail in northeast Louisiana –the state has worked with private land owners in preserving sites. People can drive and view sites.
(27:00): 10,000 B.C. or earlier there were people living on the Vermillion River for extended periods. They were extremely mobile, going out—hunting –and coming back to a campsite. Sites that may still be there but such sites have not yet been recorded.
(28:45): There is Cote Blanche Island another Clovis point-an isolated find. Salt Mine Valley
another ancient Indian find in south Louisiana. Not much known about it, there was evidence of ancient mammals mixed in with other materials, some tools. The tools may not be related to the time period of the mammals. Certainly, there are other sites of that age in south Louisiana.
(30:11): Trappey-Masterdon site on the Vermillion
Also, at Avery Island Banana Bayou mound site, 3900B.C.-2500B.C., hunter/gatherers were building mounds, a monument to a tribe. Once believed that no mounds were built that early, a thousand years before the pyramids were built. Not sure what they were used for, they were not burial mounds. Studies of Native American economy show that Louisiana was so rich in substance that hunters/gathers 6,000 years ago were able to stay fairly sedimentary.
(34:29): Stelly Mounds in St. Landry parish mentioned. Selected two or three sites from each period to mention.
(34:56): Woodland Period is important because of the advent of pottery making. Relates to a more settled lifestyle, a different use of the environment, allows the use of a chronology.
Tcefuncta culture—Lafayette mounds a site not far from the airport, north on the Vermillion, visited by archeologists in 1945, set the stage for knowing more about Tcefuncta culture.
Marksville site A.D. 1-400 there is a burial mound and other large platform mounds up on a terrace overlooking the flood plain. A lot know about it because of the WPA’s work in the 1930’s.
Martin Shell mound on Weeks Island in Iberia parish composed of discarded shells from meals over many, many centuries - 800BC -700AD.
(38:53): Plaquemine period named for the town because of the location of the mound, Medora site, excavated in the 1940’s. Archeologist identified several distinctive types of pottery, which they used to tell time, and called it Plaquemine pottery. The Plaquemine period dates relate to the Mississippi period (1200-1700 AD). Plaquemine pottery is usually found in lower Mississippi valley.
(40:27): Discussion turned to some of the mound sites (major ones) in the western Atchafalaya basin visited with students in a field school to collect basic information. Such information as when did people live there, what were their lives like, what was the community like economically and politically.
(43:04): The almost goal of a field school is how little you have to dig to get some material to date. The location of the site can’t be revealed, it is privately owned and not much is known about it. Could date from 400AD to 1700AD, no idea into which culture it would fit. It is distinct and different from other sites in Acadian. It has big flat, platform mounds. It resembles a site at Moundville, Alabama. Speculation says there was a building on top. Knowing the date the mound built is important because there were flat top mounds Indians built that were not burial mounds, which were quite early. There were no buildings on theses mounds, some say the mounds were for ceremonial purposes.
(45:51): Sites B and C are stepped mounds. Nothing known about site until we went there, it wasn’t in the literature as of 1970. No one knew site existed except the locals. After site mapped someone cleared it (site A).
(47:24): Mound D excavated on edge of a gulley on the mound to get material to carbon date. The soil was practically free of artifacts. The mound looks to have been built rapidly, in two stages. In some of the small units there was dark soil, ground beneath the mound, the subsoil—soil rich with debris- junk not wanted covered by lighter soil from floods. We think we found a village that was on the bayou. The remains of the village are buried in the sub-soil, which are protected by flood deposits. Pottery found covers several periods making the date of the mound uncertain.
(51:33): Some coring done on the mound, which is over 4 meters high (12 feet). Radio- carbon dates results are from about AD 1180 and another AD 1260. This is a Mississippi period mound site with Cole’s creek and Plaquemine ceramics. People lived there 1000-1330 AD, hunting and fishing. Were they agricultural—we don’t know. The pottery changes found were because of the people. The women had down pottery traditions, they teach the skills.
(55:53): Portage Guidry is a mound site near Henderson, was visited and mapped. Site was being destroyed and a national group, The Archaeological Conservancy, became interested in it. The landowners worked out a sale to the Archaeological Conservancy of the mound site for its preservation. Inner excavations of the site gave a lot of remains of animal bones and remains of fires of debris of when they built the mounds. Debris higher up relates to 1350 AD, so it is a Mississippian period site.