Burning and Burying Buildings: Exploring Variation in Caddo Architecture in Southwest Arkansas

Abstract

Archaeological projects at the Caddo Valley (3CL593) and Hughes (3SA11) sites near the Caddo and Saline rivers in southwest Arkansas uncovered burned structures buried within and adjacent to mounds. architecture at these two sites is compared with other excavated examples dating to the A.D. 1100s through early 1600s in the Middle Ouachita River, Little Missouri River, and Ouachita Mountains regions. termination of important buildings through burning and intentional burying is contrasted with the abandonment of ordinary structures, and the meaning of the architectural variation is explored in terms of Caddo ritual and belief systems. Caddo archaeological tradition designates the dispersed agricultural communities organized into complex sociopolitical systems that were ancestral to historic Caddo Indians and whose archaeological traces (such as maize agriculture, highly decorated ceramics, and mound centers with diverse architectural and mortuary features) are found across parts of Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma. Some researchers make a distinction between the northern (centered on the Arkansas River) and southern Caddo archaeological areas (centered on the Red River valley). Chronologically, this tradition has been divided into the Formative Caddo (A.D. 800-1000), Early Caddo (A.D. 1000-1200), Middle Caddo (A.D. 1200-1400), Late Caddo (A.D. 1400-1680), and Historic Caddo (A.D. 1680-1860) periods (Early 2004; Perttula 1996; Story 1990). In die Caddo tradition, mounds were constructed for various reasons. Some contained burials while others covered or supported structures (Harrington 1920), but many have been destroyed by agriculture, construction, looting, or previous excavations, making modern archaeological interpretation difficult.1 Situating important buildings and activities on raised earthen platforms, and burning these old structures after use, characterized both the Caddo and the Mississippian traditions (burned structures excavated in Cahokia's Monks Mound First Terrace provide one Mississippian example [Benchley 1975]). intentional burning arid burying of decommissioned buildings seems to have been a particularly important aspect of the creation of Caddo structural mounds. Caddos, the burning and burying of certain structures may have taken on ritual significance (Story 1990:341). Frank Schambach (1996) described a sequence of burned temples within Mound A at die Ferguson site in southwest Arkansas. Soil was banked outside the walls, and at the end of structure use, sand was placed on hearths, roofs were removed, and buildings set on fire. While burning, the walls were pushed in and the fire smothered with earth in what was interpreted as a careful, intentional, and ritualized burning of temple structures: For the Caddo, one immediate objective of this ritual may have been to produce the great plume of smoke and steam that must have emanated from each burned and buried building for days or even weeks, as a cord or more of wood was slowly reduced to charcoal (Schambach 1996:41). Recently, Marvin Kay and George Sabo (2006) explored the use and termination of Harlan-style charnel houses in the northern Caddo archaeological area. They linked the use of these structures with their southwest-facing extended entryways to mortuary rituals that took place during the winter season: The burning of these structures and the resulting column of smoke ascending skyward furthermore may have been identified as an axis mundi by which the souls of the deceased were transported to the world of the dead (Kay and Sabo 2006:44). Charnel houses do not seem to have been a part of mortuary ritual in the southern Caddo archaeological area (Perttula 1996; Story 1990), but die importance of fire, the use of fire in rituals, and the intentional burning of certain buildings as part of their termination are common to both areas. Mounds were no longer actively built and used by the Historic Caddo period (A. …