Book Description

This landmark volume provides the most comprehensive overview to date of the prehistory and archaeology of the Caddo peoples. The Caddos lived in the Southeastern Woodlands for more than 900 years beginning around A.D. 800–900, before being forced to relocate to Oklahoma in 1859. They left behind a spectacular archaeological record, including the famous Spiro Mound site in Oklahoma as well as many other mound centers, plazas, farmsteads, villages, and cemeteries. The Archaeology of the Caddo examines new advances in studying the history of the Caddo peoples, including ceramic analysis, reconstructions of settlement and regional histories of different Caddo communities, Geographic Information Systems and geophysical landscape studies at several spatial scales, the cosmological significance of mound and structure placements, and better ways to understand mortuary practices. Findings from major sites and drainages such as the Crenshaw site, mounds in the Arkansas River basin, Spiro Mound, the Oak Hill Village site, the George C. Davis site, the Willow Chute Bayou Locality, the Hughes site, Big Cypress Creek basin, and the McClelland and Joe Clark sites are also summarized and interpreted. This volume reintroduces the Caddos’ heritage, creativity, and political and religious complexity.