In conclusion, the Smithport Landing Site is one of the larger village sites of the earlier Caddoan (Gibson Aspect, Alto Focus) period along the Red River valley in northwestern Louisiana. It shares with a number of other village sites of this period evidences of a carry over of late Archaic projectile points and stone artifact traits. It also shares with numerous village and mound sites evidences of admixture of Coles Creek ceramic types and influences with the Alto pottery types as the earliest pottery at these sites. It seems increasingly clear that the advent of Coles Creek and Alto Caddoan peoples and/or ceramics, arrow points, and riverine mound building into this area were virtually simultaneous occurrences. Out of this blending developed the subsequent Bossier Focus ceramics and other cultural manifestations over a wide portion of northwestern Louisiana, extending into eastern Texas and southern Arkansas.
It is possible that the large ceremonial mound groups, like Gahagan and Mounds Plantation, served as ceremonial centers for a number of villages, including those in the adjoining hill areas, accounting for the frequency of specialized burials, with ceremonial copper and polished stone objects, pipes and ornamentation, and highly developed burial ceramics, in the mound sites, in comparison with the paucity of these objects in the hill villages.
Considerable research is needed (1) to establish the nature of the relationships between mound sites in the valleys and the villages in the hills; (2) to trace the extent of Coles Creek and Alto contacts and the process of amalgamation of these two strong cultures over the wide area from central Louisiana into Arkansas, Oklahoma and eastern Texas (this must have been friendly, as it is inconceivable that Caddoan peoples would have supplanted Coles Creek almost overnight in hundreds of villages); (3) and the development out of this amalgamation of Bossier, Plaquemine, and other later cultures.
FOOTNOTES
[1]Thanks are extended to Monroe Dodd, Jr., George Freeman, and other friends who assisted in the site exploration; to Alex Krieger and James A. Ford for assistance with pottery identification and typology; to A. L. Wedgeworth, Jr., for photography; and to Gordon Maxcy for film developing and assistance with the plates.
REFERENCES CITED
D’Antoni, Blaise C.
1961a. Bayou Pierre, Land of Yesteryear, Chapter 2. Newsletter, North Louisiana Historical Assn., April, pp. 9-14.
1961b. Bayou Pierre, Land of Yesteryear, Chapter 3. Newsletter, North Louisiana Historical Assn., July, pp. 7-12.
1962. Bayou Pierre, Land of Yesteryear, Chapter 5. Newsletter, North Louisiana Historical Assn., May, pp. 13-15.
Ford, James A.
1951. Greenhouse: A Troyville-Coles Creek Period Site in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. 44, Part 1.