The Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma has a large collection of ceramic vessels and other artifacts from our Carden Bottoms study area, collected between 1930 – 1950 by Arkansas judge Harry J. Lemley and acquired by the Gilcrease after his death in 1965. Members of our project team, including Robert Cast and Bobby Gonzalez of the Caddo Nation, began inventorying this material in August, 2010. We made additional trips to the Gilcrease in 2010 and 2011 to complete our inventory of Carden Bottoms materials in the collection.

We followed the same procedures at the Gilcrease that we employed to document artifact collections at the National Museum of the American Indian curation facility in Suitland, Maryland. Eric Singleton, collections manager at the Gilcrease, provided indispensable support for our efforts.

Robert Cast, Bobby Gonzalez, Ann Early, George Sabo, Leslie Walker, and Rebecca Wiewel concentrated their efforts on the whole ceramic vessels, documenting and photographing approximately 425 items.

Jared Pebworth worked on documenting the many hundreds of other Carden Bottoms artifacts, which include chipped and ground stone tools and ornaments, shell ornaments, stone and ceramic pipes, and European trade goods. In all, he collected information on some 1,500 items.

We are currently entering these data from our coding sheets into the project database so the information can be made available to project members and eventually to others with an interest in this material.

Ann Early and Robert Cast documenting vessels.

Rebecca Wiewel measuring a vessel.

Bobby Gonzalez drawing a vessel design.

Leslie Walker photographing a vessel.