All posts by Jonathan Jarvis

TARL Staff Visits the Texas State Forensic Anthropology Research Facility

by Lauren Bussiere

TARL Staff and FACTS researchers Dr. Michelle Hamilton and Courtney Siegert at the Forensic Anthropology Research Facility, Texas State University-San Marcos.
TARL Staff and FACTS researchers Dr. Michelle Hamilton and Courtney Siegert at the Forensic Anthropology Research Facility, Texas State University-San Marcos.

Recently some of TARL’s staff members had a unique opportunity to visit the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University—informally known by the public as the “body farm” but referred to as the “decomposition facility” by the researchers—and learn about the amazing research going on there. This facility and its associated labs are the home of some of the most cutting-edge forensics research happening in Texas. A huge thank-you to Dr. Michelle Hamilton, Courtney Siegert, and the rest of the staff and students at Texas State who took the time to show us around and share their research.

FACTS and its associated facilities provide training opportunities for law enforcement officers, and they collaborate with outside researchers studying taphonomic processes, recovery methods, and more. They also offer a great training and research program for Texas State students interested in forensic anthropology and bioarchaeology. Much of the research at FACTS uses the remains of people who donate their bodies. Learn more about FACTS and their various programs on their website.

One of the most interesting programs going on at FACTS is their Operation Identification or “OpID” program, which works to identify the remains of individuals who have died crossing into Texas from the Mexican border. The OpID staff and students analyze these remains and collaborate with other organizations, including the Border Patrol, FBI, NGOs, and international groups, to match the remains with reported missing persons and eventually return the remains to their families. Since 2013, the program has completed analysis of approximately 100 individuals, with 10 positive IDs made and returned to their families. Although it was heartbreaking to hear the stories of these migrants who perished while searching for a better life, we are humbled by the hard work and dedication of everyone who volunteers their time and effort to contribute to this important work. Find more information on OpID, including volunteer opportunities, through their Facebook page.

We at TARL are always glad to have the chance to get out and see what our colleagues and counterparts are doing, so that we can learn about new research and begin new collaborations.

Thank you, FACTS and Texas State!

Mystery Cache from the Lower Pecos

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The bag from Horseshoe Ranch Cave, with its fascinating contents shown in order of their removal by analysts at the University of Texas in 1936 . Radiocarbon dated to ca. 4200 cal. B.P., during the time that the monumental Pecos River Style rock art began to flourish, the cache offers a rare–if enigmatic–glimpse into the traditions of Lower Pecos people. Reflecting both the mundane and sacred, the bag has been described as a hunter’s pouch and a medicine bundle. Photo by James Neely, TARL Archives.

Caches and burials connect us in a very personal way to past events and the traditions of ancient cultures. In 1936, archeologists from The University of Texas working in the arid Lower Pecos canyonlands of southwest Texas uncovered what they described as “a find of unusual interest”: a twined-fiber bag, filled with an array of objects, and still securely fastened after more than 4000 years. Recent studies of this TARL collection, including technical analyses of stone and bone tools and radiocarbon assays of plant remains, are helping to unlock some of its secrets. More than 80 years after its discovery, we are featuring this rare and little-known collection as a Spotlight feature on Texas Beyond History and rethinking its significance and meaning.
Learn more about this fascinating collection: http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/spotlights/hunterspouch/hunterspouch.html

TARL at Explore UT 2016

By Lauren Bussiere
Recently TARL’s staff participated in an annual volunteering tradition: Explore UT day at the university. Each year, UT invites thousands of students of all ages from all over the state to visit the UT campus and participate in educational activities while experiencing a sample of college life. To share our love of archeology with the kids, TARL staff contributes several activity booths to this event every year.

TARL’s Stacy Drake teaches students what archeologists can learn from human remains at Explore UT.
TARL’s Stacy Drake teaches students what archeologists can learn from human remains at Explore UT.

This year, TARL’s activities included cloth button-making, rock art drawing, artifact ID, and of course lots of coloring pages. Additionally, dedicated graduate students from the Department of Anthropology contributed very popular activities including human bone identification, grinding with manos and metates, and learning to write names using Egyptian hieroglyphs. We were also very grateful to have archeologist Chris Ringstaff, a friend of TARL and expert flintknapper, on hand to demonstrate stone tool production. As always, Chris’s demonstrations were a huge hit!

Archeologist Chris Ringstaff gives a demonstration on chipped stone tool manufacture to Explore UT visitors.
Archeologist Chris Ringstaff gives a demonstration on chipped stone tool manufacture to Explore UT visitors.

Thank you to the Explore UT team for organizing this great event and giving us the chance to share fun archeology activities with hundreds of students. Thank you also to everyone who volunteered to help make this fun day possible!

Tracing Clovis Morphology: The “Other Occupation” of TBH’s Heather Smith

Heather Smith serves not just as Web Developer and Associate Editor of Texas Beyond History, but–having completed her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Texas A&M University—now teaches lithic technology and archeological field methods. Her research into Paleoindian behavior and technological adaptations, particularly fluted points, has taken her far afield: from Texas to Alaska and Siberia for fieldwork, and to museums and repositories across the U.S. and Canada to examine collections. A nine-year veteran with the TBH staff, she brings a variety of talents and experience, including photo communications and graphic design, in addition to her knowledge of archeology, to the website. In a new TBH Spotlight feature, she presents some of her findings on Clovis technology using geometric morphometric analysis.

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Graphic designed by Heather Smith for the new TBH Spotlight feature highlighting her geometric morphometric study of fluted projectile points. The sample for the study included more than 100 points from 23 sites across the country, including several Clovis caches and a sample of Clovis points from the Gault site.

By Heather Smith

My fascination with Paleoindian archeology began while an undergraduate student studying anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin and as an intern doing web and graphic design for Texas Beyond History. From that early point in my academic career, my interests became focused on late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer research and First Americans studies. As a graduate student at Texas A&M University, I began to sharpen my major research questions on ways human technology and behavior were adapted to past environments. I became curious as to how prehistoric peoples organized their lithic technology, beginning with the acquisition of raw materials, to the manufacture and maintenance of tools, to the loss or discard of tools. On a larger scale, I wanted to research the timing and means of human dispersal events that resulted in the occupation of the American continents.

One of my projects involved collecting metric and geometric morphometric data on early fluted projectile points and subsequent statistical analyses of this information. Although this research required me to travel to numerous museums and curation facilities across North America, a major focus was TARL, where one of the most important assemblages of Paleoindian artifacts was being studied: Clovis projectile points from the Gault site. Now as an archeologist, university instructor, and Associate Editor of TBH, I am continuing my research in this exciting field.

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Clovis points from the Gault site used in the geometric morphometric study of fluted projectile points. Photo by Heather Smith, TARL.

In a new Spotlight feature on TBH, I explain how geometric morphometrics can be used in chipped-stone projectile point analysis. These and other analytical tools can help us understand stone-tool manufacture processes, variation in chipped-stone points, and provide evidence to help identify patterns in the movements and adaptations of people across the landscape. Interestingly, my findings suggest that Clovis points from the Gault site were more closely associated with other points from the southwest region, including Blackwater Draw in Clovis, New Mexico, and with those from the northwest, rather than with Clovis points from the northeast. Said differently, it appears that the same peoples who occupied southwestern places like Gault were the same cultural groups or closely related to those who occupied the northwest during this early time period.

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Smith photographing Clovis points at the National Museum of Natural History.

To see the TBH Spotlight feature, visit: http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/spotlights/geomet-morphomet/geomet-morphomet.html

 

TARL Collections Highlighted in Book of UT’s Hidden Treasures

By Lauren Bussiere

This January, the UT Press released a landmark volume entitled The Collections: The University of Texas at Austin. This beautiful coffee-table volume, edited by Andrée Bober, highlights more than 80 collections of historical, artistic, and scientific objects held by the University. TARL is honored and delighted to have some of our most beautiful artifacts included in this publication.

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Cat. No. 16SA48-209, Incised effigy on ground and polished quartz crystal from the Coral Snake Mound in Sabine Parish, Louisiana. Featured in The Collections: The University of Texas at Austin.

The Collections showcases only a small amount of the 170 million objects of significant cultural, historic, and scientific value owned by UT Austin—making the University the largest repository of these objects in the state and possibly in the U.S. Some of UT’s collections date as far back as 1883 when the university was founded. Materials from TARL highlighted in the volume include gorgeous lithic, ceramic, and perishable items, some of which date to 10,000 to 13,000 years ago.

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Cat. No. 68, Corner-tang knife of grey chert, excavated by the University in 1974-75 at the Ernest Witte site in Austin County, Texas. Featured in The Collections: The University of Texas at Austin.

The inclusion of TARL materials in The Collections was made possible by the work of TARL Director Emeritus Darrell Creel and former TARL Head of Collections Laura Nightengale. Work on this massive volume began more than five years ago, and we are all gratified to see the realization of their labor of love.

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The Collections: The University of Texas at Austin, now available from UT Press.

For more information about the book or to purchase a copy, please visit the UT Press website.

The Harrell Site Revisited: Collections Rehab Work at TARL

By Lauren Bussiere

Last year, TARL received a grant from the Texas Historical Commission’s Texas Preservation Trust Fund grant program to conduct a collection rehabilitation project on one of our oldest collections of archaeological material. For this project, TARL chose the collection from the Harrell Site, a fascinating site in North Texas that was excavated by the WPA in 1938-1939. This rehab project was designed to make sure that the site collection is preserved for many years to come, and catalogued in such a way that it can be studied by future researchers. The rehab efforts also served as a pilot project to establish effective and efficient rehab procedures for use on other collections here at TARL.

The Harrell Site excavation was one of the largest projects conducted by the North Texas WPA team. Sitting on bluffs above the Brazos River, the site included a massive midden and hearth feature, known as the “Great Midden,” as well as numerous smaller hearths and burials. Two main occupations, dating to the Late Archaic and Late Prehistoric periods, are seen at the site, with continued usage of the site in the intervening period suggested as well. The Harrell site is the namesake for the Harrell Point, a small arrow point, and was considered the type site for the Henrietta Focus by archaeologist Alex Krieger, who analyzed the site collection in 1945. Read more about the Harrell site excavations here.

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Harrell Points and Thumbnail End Scrapers from the Harrell site.

The WPA excavations of the 1930s and 40s were conducted in partnership with UT, and many of the materials recovered were brought to the University back in the 1940’s. But, curation standards in 2015 are much different than they were 75 years ago! While our newer accessions are stored and catalogued using modern practices, many of our older collections are still stored in the same condition they have been in for 30 years, or 50 years, or longer.

Our grant from TPTF was a rare and important opportunity to dedicate resources and staff time to bringing these collections up to modern standards. Eventually we hope to apply what we’ve learned from this project to all of our older collections.

TARL’s Harrell site rehabilitation project consisted of three main components:
1. Digitizing, inventorying, and improving storage for all of the field notes, reports, maps, and other records associated with the Harrell site’s excavation and subsequent analysis;
2. Cataloguing, photographing, and repackaging all of the artifacts remaining in the Harrell site collection, and re-analyzing the human remains from the site; and,
3. Creating a searchable, state-of-the art database that contains all of the data relating to the site artifacts, features, and records.

RecordsRecords2 Harrell site records before and after rehabilitation.

As a result of these rehab efforts, the 2,300+ artifacts that comprise the Harrell collection are now individually tagged and repackaged, and their storage conditions will ensure that they are safe for a much longer time. All the site records are organized, protected, and available for digital viewing. And, our database will make it simple to see what excavators found at the site, what we still have, and where to find every single artifact within TARL’s collections. This work has paved the way for future analysis of the Harrell site collection, and for our future rehab efforts on other collections.

Bone_and_shell Packaging Bone and shell tools from the Harrell site before and after rehabilitation.

Rehabilitating the Harrell collection has also been a valuable opportunity to revisit some of the past work that has been done on the site. The artifact assemblage plainly shows that many of the cultural practices inferred by Krieger and others were clearly present at the site: residents were grinding food with manos and metates, probably practicing s ome horticulture or agriculture, and utilizing the abundant mussels from the river as a major food source. Numerous projectile points of many sizes and types were used for hunting during both major occupation phases. Ceramic pipes and ochre indicate that ceremonial or ritual activity took place at the site, and intrusive burials suggest that the locations of earlier grave sites were preserved in cultural memory over some length of time.

TARL’s rehab work on the Harrell site collection has opened the door for future work on the site significant contributions to our understanding of North Texas in prehistory could be made by researchers:
• conducting usewear analysis of the stone tool collection,
• studying the assemblage in comparison to other sites, or
• close analysis of the ceramics, mussel shell, or bone artifacts.

These are just a few examples of the types of work that could be done using this collection. We hope that this work will spark interest in additional research on this site and other WPA-era collections housed here at TARL.

We hope to have a full report on our rehab work—including an online database with photos—available to the public through the TARL website very soon. We are extremely grateful to the THC for making this important work possible!

TARL at the 86th Annual Meeting of the Texas Archeological Society

by Lauren Bussiere

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Jessie, Marybeth, Lauren, Stacy and Jonathan at the TAS meeting

Recently TARL’s staff braved torrential downpours, high winds, and sketchy hotel continental breakfasts to attend the 86th Annual Meeting of the Texas Archeological Society in Houston. We all greatly enjoyed sharing our work with our friends and colleagues, meeting new folks and spending time with old friends.

During the meetings, TAS honored TARL Associate Director Jonathan Jarvis for 20 years of membership, and Texas Beyond History director Susan Dial for 30 years of membership in the TAS. We are reminded of how fortunate TARL is to have such dedicated and knowledgeable members of the professional community leading our team!

TARL staff had a great time presenting our work at our symposium session, “TARL Today: Projects and Prospects,” and we are grateful to everyone who took the time to come listen to our presentations and offer their feedback on our work. TARL Associate Director Jonathan Jarvis presented on “The Legacy of A. T. Jackson,” providing a fascinating look into the history of TARL’s collections and particularly the many assemblages that were excavated during the WPA era of Texas archaeology. Head of Collections Marybeth Tomka and Curatorial Assistant Lauren Bussiere shared their pilot project—rehabbing one of these WPA-era collections—in their talk “WPA Archaeology: Revisiting the Harrell Site Collections.” TARL Osteologist and NAGPRA Coordinator Stacy Drake discussed her findings regarding “Skeletal Pathologies of Prehistoric Individuals at Falcon Reservoir,” providing a fascinating look into the challenges of salvage projects, and TARL Osteology Intern Jessie LeViseur demonstrated the wealth of new information that can be gained from re-analyzing old collections in her talk, “The Harrell Site: A New Perspective of a Prehistoric Cemetery.” Finally, TARL Director Brian Roberts discussed TARL’s current state and plans for the future in his presentation, “TARL Today.” We hope that our session provided an interesting look into the various projects that keep us busy here at TARL.

We were all also glad to have the opportunity to hear about the great projects our colleagues across the state have been conducting. TARL would like to extend our thanks to all the presenters for sharing their work, to our audience members for their interest in TARL and support of our work, and especially to the organizers of the TAS meetings: the Houston Archeological Society, Fort Bend Archeological Society, and Brazoria Archeological Society. Their hard work made this year’s meetings a fun and educational experience for all of us!

Drawing a Culture in Transition: Plains Indian Ledger Drawings

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This richly detailed drawing from the Schild Ledger Book features two men, both carrying rattles and a fan and garbed in elaborate attire. Although a noted Plains Indian artist identified the figures as Kiowa dancers, the enigmatic German text written on the drawing reads, “Ollie Johnson daughter and grandson.” According to notes accompanying the ledger book when it was acquired by The University of Texas, Ollie Johnson was purported to be a Comanche woman who created the paintings. Labels such as these appear on most of the drawings, adding to the mystery of the book’s authorship. TARL Archives.

A new Spotlight feature on Texas Beyond History focuses on one of TARL’s most unusual collections. The Schild Ledger book comprises nearly 60 Plains Indian ledger drawings variously ascribed to the Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Comanche. Some are brilliant in color and detail, others mere pencil sketches that were never completed. Known as ledger drawings because of the paper on which they were drawn—typically ruled pages from account books acquired as a gift or through theft or trade—the art was created largely in the last third of the 19th century to portray heroic deeds, tribal traditions, and battles with U.S. soldiers and settlers as the Plains Indian way of life passed into history.

Much of what is known about the Schild Ledger Book raises questions—from the identity and tribal affiliation of the artist or artists who created the drawings, to the circumstances of the book coming into the possession of a purported Indian Agent from Fredericksburg, Texas, and ultimately to its being taken abroad to Germany.  In this Spotlight feature, we consider clues and possible answers and provide an online gallery of prime examples from the collection for researchers to examine further.

To read more and explore these drawings, see The Schild Ledger Book

Meet TARL’s New Curatorial Assistant: Lauren Bussiere

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Lauren at the Roman site of Jerash in northern Jordan, 2011.

As TARL’s new Curatorial Assistant, I’m excited to get to work rehabbing some of TARL’s great old collections and helping make all that material and information accessible to other researchers.

My background is mostly in Mesoamerican Archaeology, but I’m a Texas girl at heart and a Texas State alum (go Bobcats!). I have a deep love for Central America, Mexico, and the desert Southwest, which inspires me to help preserve the cultural patrimony of these areas and to help ensure that their stories are a part of our shared world history. As one of the largest repositories of cultural material from sites across Texas and beyond, TARL plays an important role in conserving invaluable material and information, facilitating dialogue, and promoting innovative research—and I am honored to be part of this great team!

As a graduate student in Anthropological Archaeology at the University of California, San Diego, I conducted field research in Belize, Mexico, and Jordan, as well as some CRM work in California. My Master’s work focused on warfare and defensive structures in the northern Maya Lowlands, building off my excavation of the site perimeter wall at the Late and Terminal Classic site of Chichén Itzá. My post-M.A. research included looking at intra-site exchange patterns across households at a minor Maya site in Belize, as well as research into chemical analysis methodologies for stone tools at Bronze Age sites in Jordan.

Working on such a range of projects, I gained a strong appreciation for the importance—as well as the difficulty—of ensuring that archaeological data is precise, detailed, organized, compliant, and most importantly, easy to interpret by future researchers. Part of my challenge here at TARL is to consolidate records from old projects, bring them up to contemporary standards, and organize them to facilitate future analysis. Meanwhile, I’m also working to update artifact inventories and ensure that these irreplaceable artifacts are stored in such a way that they will be preserved for many years to come. This is no easy task, given that some of TARL’s collections date from the days when archaeology was in its infancy!

In my spare time, I enjoy running, yoga, hiking, spending time with my husband and two cats, and gardening. I am also a hobby beekeeper, so please call me if you see a swarm that needs a good home!

Rhythm and Ritual: Traces of Music in Ancient Texas

By Susan Dial

Native peoples in Texas used a variety of instruments to create sounds and music throughout prehistory and into more recent times. Among TARL’s vast collections are a number of unusual artifacts likely used during rituals, ceremonies, and other events. Based on the contexts in which the instruments were found, many were used in burial rites. Ethnographic accounts provide additional insights about other circumstances in which similar instruments were played.

Crafted of wood, clay, bone, and other natural materials, the instruments’ design and construction provide clues to the powerful range of sounds they emitted. We can imagine the shrill notes of a flute or whistle, the eerily grating noise of a rasp, the quivering beats of a rattle, and hollow rhythms of a skin-covered drum. These otherworldly sounds accompanied shaman’s chants and set the pace for dancers and processionalists.

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Engraved whooping crane whistle (top) and more than 350 black drum teeth found in a cluster within a small circular area. The teeth appear to have been confined within a circular container, such as a gourd, and may represent a rattle. These items were recovered from the grave of two juveniles at the Mitchell Ridge site. Photo by Robert Ricklis. TARL Collections. (Click to enlarge for more detail.)

Among the more fascinating music-related artifacts at TARL are 11 bird bone whistles excavated from Late Prehistoric and early Historic period burials at the Mitchell Ridge site near Galveston. All are made from the ulna, or lower wing bones, of the whooping crane (Grus Americana). The bones are hollow with very thin walls, making them good candidates for modification into wind instruments. Whistles have a single air hole, rather than several air holes, distinguishing them from flutes. According to archeologist Robert Ricklis, who investigated and reported on the site, several of the specimens have plugs of asphaltum, a natural tar-like substance emitted from oil seepages beneath the Gulf of Mexico, which partially cover and narrow the air holes. This feature served to control the air flow and cause the whistling sound when the instrument was blown. Four of the whistles are decorated with finely engraved lines in geometric patterns. Similarly engraved whistles made of whooping crane and heron ulna have been found in Louisiana.

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Drawings of additional whooping crane ulna whistles from the Mitchell Ridge site showing the detailed geometric designs engraved on the bones. Image from Ricklis 1994 (Fig. 18).

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These undecorated whooping crane whistles were placed in the grave of a young man, 18-20 years of age, at Mitchell Ridge. Note the rectangular air hole cut into each whistle. Photo by Bob Ricklis. TARL Collections.

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Reed flute from the Perry Calk site, a rockshelter situated high above the Rio Grande in southwest Texas. Unlike whistles, flutes have more than one air hole. The cane-like common reed from which the instrument was made grows in abundance along streams and rivers and was used for a variety of purposes. Photo by Monica Trejo and Matt Peeples (AMIS 2794b). TARL Collections.

Artifacts interpreted as rattles are rarely found intact. In some cases, the enclosing container, such as a gourd, deteriorated over time, leaving only the rattle contents—small, regular items such as pebbles or clay balls that would have made an impressive sound when the container was shaken. Prime examples of this sort of extrapolated evidence come from the Mitchell Ridge site where four tight clusters of black drum teeth—interpreted as the contents of rattles—were found in burials. More rarely, rattles are recovered intact or nearly so. At the Caplen Mound cemetery site on the Bolivar Peninsula, a decorated turtle carapace was found laying in the burial of an infant. Drill holes in the shape of a “U” suggest the carapace served as a breast plate or rattle. The presence of several glass trade beads indicates the infant burial occurred in the early historic time period. At other south Texas burial sites such as Morhiss Mound, deer antlers and modified antler tips were found in burials, and these have been interpreted as rattles or tinklers, the latter perhaps appended to the clothing of the individual.

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Tortoise shell rattle found in a child’s grave at Caplen Mound on the Bolivar Peninsula about 25 miles northeast of the present-day city of Galveston. The small shell, decorated with a series of drilled holes and containing several small pebbles, was found in the neck area of the child, and may have been worn suspended from a cord. TARL Archives.

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This odd-looking clay bowl from a Franklin County Caddo site was crafted with four protruding hollow nodes containing small pebbles or clay pellets. When shaken, the bowl produces a rattling sound. Listen to the sound http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/tejas/images/rattle-bowl.wav. The bowl is Late Caddo (Fulton Aspect), ca. A.D 1400-1650. TARL Collections.

In addition to burial ceremonies, music and rhythmic sounds were important in other rituals. The Spanish priest Espinosa describes a healing ritual among the Caddo in which flutes and rasps were used. To cure a patient, according to his early 1700s account, they make a large fire and “provide flutes and a feather fan. The instruments [palillos-rasps] are manufactured [sticks] with notches resembling a snake’s rattle. This palillo placed in a hollow bone upon a skin makes a noise nothing less than devilish.”

According to Caddo tribal historians, numerous types of instruments—rattles, drums, and flutes—were played during rituals and dances, and some of these rich traditions continue today among peoples of the Caddo Nation.

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Marked with a series of carefully incised parallel notches, hollow bones such as these have been described as “tally bones,” or counting devices. More likely, they were rasps used as musical or ceremonial instruments. They were recovered from the Harrell Site (41YN1) in north central Texas.

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This notched rasping stick from Conejo Shelter in the Lower Pecos region is made of mesquite wood. Photo by Monica Trejo and Matt Peeples (AMIS 23549).

Other historic accounts mention the use of musical instruments in battle and in hunting rituals. During a 1690s battle between the Cacaxtle Indians and the Spanish in what is now south Texas, an elderly Indian woman played a flute throughout, perhaps to buoy the spirits of the Cacaxtle warriors. As recorded by Spanish historian Juan Bautista Chapa, at the end of the battle more than 100 Indians lay dead and another 70 were taken captive. Noted Swiss-American ethnographer Albert Gatschet recorded peyote ceremonies associated with deer hunting among the Rio Grande Comecrudos. This ceremony was accompanied by music from drums and rattles and dancing from elaborately dressed shamans. Achieving a trance state through repetitive music, which typically involved rattles and chanting, was an important component of shamanic ceremonies.

Musical instruments played an important role in the rituals and spiritual life of native groups in the past. Witness accounts such as these help bring to life some of the mute artifacts in TARL Collections and provide colorful insights into how some of these fascinating instruments may have been used.
Learn more about sites mentioned in this entry:

For more information about the Mitchell Ridge site, see the multi-section exhibit on Texas Beyond History: http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/mitchell/index.html. The Credits page of this exhibit includes the full report of excavations by Robert A. Ricklis (1994 Aboriginal Life and Culture on the Upper Texas Coast: Archaeology at the Mitchell Ridge Site, 41GV66, Galveston Island; Coastal Archaeological Research, Inc., Corpus Christi) which can be downloaded as pdf files.
Caplen Mound http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/coast/images/ap4.html
Harrell Site http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/harrell/index.html
Cacaxtle Indians Attacked by Spanish http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/st-plains/images/he10.html