Zooarchaeological Insights into Early Caddo and Late Woodland Subsistence along Bois d’Arc Creek, Northeast Texas

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Academia: Zooarchaeological Case Studies from CRM and Other Nonacademic Spaces" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Between 2019 and 2021, AR Consultants, Inc. excavated six sites in the Bois d’Arc Creek watershed, yielding abundant evidence for residential occupations spanning the prehistoric Woodland and Caddo periods. Archaeofaunal analyses for three sites are now complete, with the fourth underway. This area of Texas sits at the prairie-woodland transition, providing access to diverse animal resources. The faunal assemblages are taxonomically rich, with abundant deer, turtle, bird, and rabbit remains. Bone surface preservation is generally excellent, allowing us to assess human butchery practices as well as the contributions of non-human taphonomic processes to assemblage formation. These data shed light on the resources that people relied on while living in this area, site occupation season, and how Bois d’Arc Creek subsistence compares to other areas of Northeast Texas with evidence for Woodland and Caddo occupations. This talk will present our findings to date as well as discuss the advantages and challenges of undertaking a large multi-analyst archaeofaunal project in a CRM setting.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Beyond Academia: Zooarchaeological Case Studies from CRM and Other Nonacademic Spaces

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52263