Especially to be commended are the assistant archeologists, John Allen Graham, L. F. Duffield, W. A. Davis, and LeRoy Johnson, Jr., all of whom carried out their duties in exemplary fashion despite the continuous pressure under which they were working.
The Site
ENVIRONMENT
Ferrell’s Bridge Reservoir is located in the northwestern part of the Gulf Coastal Plain (Fenneman, 1938: 109-110), which is characterized topographically by rounded hills sculptured from the superficial clays and sands of the region. The subsoil—a sandy clay in various shades of yellow, orange, and red—is capped by a thin mantle of gray sand which evidently derived by differential erosion from the sandy clay. The exposed geological formations recognized in the general region are clays and sands of the Eocene Claiborne group (Sellards et al., 1958: 606-666).
The reservoir is situated in the Austroriparian Biotic Province (Blair, 1950: 93-117). The uplands are thickly timbered, principally with pines, while the stream valleys sustain heavy stands of mixed hardwoods (oaks, cypress, gum, walnut, hickory, holly, and others) in addition to some pines. All the virgin forests were completely timbered out years ago. Bear and panther, which were formerly common, have long since disappeared from the area, but a large population of deer, raccoon, opossum, fox, rabbit, beaver, and other small mammals survives to the present day. The streams abound with several varieties of fish.
The climate is relatively humid, the annual rainfall at the Gilmer station averaging 43.5 inches (U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Climatological Data, Texas, V. 63, No. 13: 361). The mean annual temperature for Upshur County is 65 degrees (Ibid.: 357).
SITE DESCRIPTION
The Harroun Site was situated on the south floodplain of Cypress Creek on the outside of a large bend ([Fig. 1]). The only occupational features visible on the surface were four small mounds, round to slightly oval in shape, with rounded tops. They were designated Mounds A, B, C, and D. A long, narrow lake, evidently surviving from an old cut-off channel of Cypress Creek, lay beside the creek channel in the northwestern part of the site.
Mound A, located 75 feet south of the creek and 350 feet east of the lake, was by far the smallest of the four mounds. It measured about 30 feet in diameter and rose to a maximum height of approximately two feet above the surface of the floodplain. Mound B stood at the south end of the lake, Mound C was on the west bank of the lake, and Mound D was situated in a precarious position on the brink of the floodplain at the creek channel, 150 feet downstream from Mound A. A shallow depression beside Mound C and two small depressions by Mound B marked possible borrow areas. Mounds B, C, and D were all approximately the same size, about 50 feet in diameter and 2.5 to 3.5 feet high.
The floodplain of Cypress Creek in the vicinity of the Harroun Site was overgrown with an almost impenetrable tangle of underbrush and second growth timber. Old-timers, however, reported that many years ago, before the virgin timber was cut, the stream valleys in this region supported a tall growth of timber with virtually no underbrush.