Jerry Hilliard
As the result of the Survey’s 2010 – 2012 National Endowment of Humanities (NEH) grant for investigations at the Carden Bottoms site (3YE25), Dr. Leslie Walker and Jerry Hilliard are currently examining the relationship of features and associated artifacts that were excavated from three houses. These houses were occupied by Native American people who lived around 1600 A.D. in a large settlement located below Petit Jean Mountain in the Arkansas River Valley. In addition to discovering remains of cooking vessels, evidence of pottery making, use of bone tools and personal items, we found evidence of stone tool production and tool maintenance, pigment processing, and storage of various goods.
This study is possible only because excavations were very carefully planned and executed. In addition to exacting trowel work and ample sampling of soil matrix, individual artifacts were point-plotted using an electronic total station, capable of sub-centimeter accuracy both in area (X Y coordinates) and elevation. These methods allow us to examine the architectural features, associated tools and other remains, as well as the relationships between interior house features such as the hearth, posts, walls, interior partitions, the house floor, loft and roof. Objects were found that were clearly “above the house floor” as well as “on the house floor.” The “above floor” objects were in the lofts of these large (ca 8m square) dwellings or on benches located against the interior walls. The “house floor” objects; on the other hand, were found below those “above floor” artifacts and situated around the central hearth on the floor itself.
As an example, stone arrow points both of the triangular type Madison as well as the willow leaf type Nodena were found inside the houses. Stone tools and tool debris, including small river pebble or cobble cores, preforms, flakes, and thumbnail scrapers were also found in small clusters. The variety and type of chipped stone tools and the tool making kits, in addition to tool debris, indicate stone tools were not only maintained within the houses, but also manufactured.
The overwhelming majority of tools and chipped debris were made from Ozark cherts that occur locally as river pebbles or small cobbles, having washed into the Arkansas River Valley over the millennia. Novaculite tools were also used, but these are far less common than the Ozark chert sources which could have been collected in the river gravels locally. Tools and flakes from Alibates and other “exotic” chert such as Flint Hills, were also found in very small numbers. These chert formations do not occur locally, but have washed in cobble or pebble form from their places of origin in the southern Plains, eventually making their way east to the Carden Bottoms locale over thousands of years.
