pip. >fo^' 2^lY' TEXARKANA RESERVOIR — JELKS 67 



assumed in the absence of conflicting data. In view of the many 

 parallels between Sherwin and Knight's Bluff, however, any time 

 difference that may exist between the two must be slight, undoubt- 

 edly to be reckoned in decades. 



GENEEAL DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS 



The Knight's Bluff Village is considered to be a manifestation of 

 what has been termed the Texarkana Focus (Krieger, 1946, pp. 206- 

 212) with certain aberrations from the norm of that complex. The 

 Sherwin Site is very similar in most respects to the Knight's Bluff 

 Village, but has a few peculiarities of its own. The Snipes Site is 

 different from both of the others, being basically affiliated with the 

 Baytown Period of the Lower Mississippi Valley, probably with the 

 Period E-D, or the Troyville Period, specifically. Caddoan ceramics 

 also occurred at the Snipes Site, but exact relationsliip to the prin- 

 cipal occupation could not be determined. 



In outlining the outstanding problems in Caddoan Area archeology 

 in the Introduction, it will be recalled that the problems were con- 

 sidered in two categories: (1) Those concerned with interrelation- 

 ships of traits and complexes within the Caddoan Area itself, and 

 (2) those regarding relationships between Caddoan Area complexes 

 and those of other areas, especially the Lower Mississippi Valley. 

 These two groups of problems will be discussed separately. 



Intra-area 'problems. — To one not familiar at first hand with 

 Caddoan Area archeology, the present literature might lead to an 

 impression that the recognized complexes are made up of artifact 

 types and other culture traits that occur almost invariably in closely 

 knit, tightly integrated clusters or foci. This may have resulted in 

 the concept that a focus consists of a consistent, distinctive trait 

 inventory. Thus when artifact types identified with one particular 

 focus are found with a component of another focus, the tendency is 

 to think in terms of "influence" or "trade items." While influence 

 or trade may be responsible in some cases, the writer feels that pres- 

 ence of many of these "extraneous" traits can be explained in terms 

 of what might be thought of as "normal distribution patterns of 

 types." 



One factor that has probably contributed to the concept of re- 

 strictive, cohesive clustering of types is that many of the Caddoan 

 foci are 'predicated hasically on data from one excavated site to the 

 focus. This is especially true of the Gibson Aspect where the Alto 

 Focus is based on the Davis Site, the Gahagan Focus on the Gahagan 

 Site, the Spiro Focus on the Spiro Site, and the Sanders Focus on 

 the Sanders Site. No other major components of any of these Gibson 

 Aspect foci have been excavated and described. Artifact types identi- 



