Comments on “Tables 1–3 in Mesoamerican-Mississippian interaction across the far Southern Plains by Long-Range Toyah Intermediaries” (Carpenter 2020, Plains Anthropologist)

Abstract

In Tables 1–3 of his recent article in Plains Anthropologist, Carpenter (2020) examines the material culture record of contact between the Southwest and the Caddo area as part of a broader consideration of Mesoamerican-Mississippian interaction, focusing on Southwestern ceramics, obsidian, and turquoise found on Caddo sites that he suggested moved along a Toyah corridor. There are errors and omissions in these three tables that overstate the archaeological evidence for Southwestern artifacts in East Texas Caddo sites. First of all, these three tables have errors because they each include a number of non-Caddo sites of Late Prehistoric age (ca. AD 800–1600) found on the East Fork of the Trinity River in the Blackland Prairie in Collin and Rockwall counties (Crook and Hughston 2015; Crook and Perttula 2018:1–2). Ancestral Caddo sites are found to the east of there in the Post Oak Savanna and Pineywoods of East Texas. Carpenter (2020:342) does differentiate these sites in the text but not in Tables 1–3. Table 1 concerns Southwestern ceramics in Caddo sites in East Texas. Carpenter includes eight Caddo sites, all listed in Crook and Perttula (2018:13–16), but omitted two other sites: an unrecorded site in Red River County with likely Upper Gila ware from southern and western New Mexico (ca. AD 1300–1450) and a site in Shelby County with Chupadero Black-on-white (ca. AD 1050– 1550) made in central and southern New Mexico. plains anthropologist, Vol. 66 No. 258, May 2021, 83–85