Frog and human effigy stone pipes and polished and engraved pottery vessel made about A.D. 1050. Artifacts from the Gahagan Mound site, Red River Parish, Louisiana.
The second Caddo site where high ceremonialism existed is at Mounds Plantation, on an old Red River channel just north of Shreveport. An oval plaza, more than 600 yards in length and 200 yards in width (about twenty-five acres), is surrounded by seven mounds of varying sizes, with two smaller mounds at some distance. It was first described by Clarence B. Moore (1912), then studied by surface collections and limited excavations by Ralph R. McKinney, Robert Plants, and Clarence H. Webb, with assistance of friends (Webb and McKinney 1975). At least four culture periods were indicated by pottery sherds. Excavations proved that Coles Creek people established and laid out the site, probably constructing at least four of the mounds around the plaza. A flat mound on the northwest corner, started by these people, was built higher by the early Caddos in what seems to have been a period of rapid culture change. The mound may have been the location of an arbor or lodge where food was prepared and served during festivals or ceremonies held in the adjoining plaza.
At the southeast end of the plaza, the Coles Creek people prepared a large burial pit, measuring sixteen by fourteen feet, in which they placed ten adult or adolescent burials in two parallel rows. Offerings found by the investigators were limited to flint arrow points, bone pins, smoothing stones, traces of copper-plated ear ornaments, and ankle rattles of tortoise shells filled with pebbles. A small mound had been built over this pit, and into this mound later Coles Creek burials had been placed.
Subsequently, the Alto Caddos also used this mound for burials, digging four large shaft tombs and three smaller pits. All but one of these features contained offerings of superior quality. The most spectacular of the graves was a large crater-shaped pit adjoining the Coles Creek pit. It was nineteen by seventeen feet in dimensions, and was cut through the mound to a depth of four feet below its base. In it were the skeletons of twenty-one persons, from elderly adults to unborn infants. An adult male, six feet tall, was provided with numerous personal effects which included a sheathed knife on his left forearm and a well-preserved five and one-half foot bow of bois d’arc wood placed by his left side. He is thought to have been the paramount person whose death occasioned the immense tomb, the ceremonial offerings, and the presumed sacrifice of tribal members to accompany him in the afterlife. Part of the tomb was covered with a framework of cedar logs, thus accounting for the unusual preservation of many cane and wooden objects.
Prehistoric Caddoan stone knives, finely chipped arrow points, and ceremonial polished greenstone celts from Gahagan Mound site. These Early Caddo artifacts date to the 11th century A.D.