Circular houses of the same general architecture as those at the Harroun
Site are typical of the Caddoan Area, especially during the Fulton
Aspect period (Webb, 1940; Harrington, 1920; Newell and Krieger, 1949;
Goldschmidt, 1935; Davis, 1958). Harrington (1920) reported several
circular houses with extended entranceways found beneath sand mounds one
to three feet high in southwestern Arkansas. Some of these houses had
been built on the surface of the ground, some had been built in shallow
pits, and others had been placed on low mounds. Most of them had been
burned, and all were associated with typically Caddoan artifacts and
with burned clay daub. Harrington thought the houses were earth lodges
which had burned and collapsed, the earth from the walls and roofs
falling over the house floors so as to form mounds. Webb (1940) reported
architecturally similar houses at the Belcher Site in northwestern
Louisiana, but presented a strong argument that they were
wattle-and-daub houses and not earth lodges.
It appears certain that the Harroun houses were also wattle-and-daub
structures without any covering of earth. This conclusion is based on
the following points:
1. The bodies of the mounds were composed of soft sand entirely unsuited
for covering the sides and roofs of houses. It is doubtful if sand of
this consistency would stick to a vertical or steeply sloping wall at
all; but even if it did, it would surely be washed away with the first
heavy rain.
2. The central portions of the Harroun mounds stood from two to three
feet above the floors of the houses. If all this sand had fallen in from
the tops of earth lodges, then the lodges must originally have had sand
piled at least two or three feet thick on the middle of their roofs.
This does not seem probable.
3. Fragments of burned, wattle-impressed, clay daub at all the Harroun
houses indicate that the houses were plastered with clay, presumably on
the outside. Burned clay daub apparently does not occur archeologically
in association with true earth lodges in the plains.
4. Remains of true earth lodges in the Plains area show superficially as
depressions, often with a low ring-shaped mound around the perimeter
(Wedel, 1936: 24; Lehmer, 1954). Sometimes the depressions result in
part from the shallow pits in which the lodges were built. But even when
an earth lodge was built directly on a flat surface rather than in a
pit, the mound left behind when the lodge collapsed has a concavity in
the center instead of being convex as were the mounds at the Harroun
Site. It is significant that Mound D was prominent and convex in shape
even though the house it covered had been built in a pit. Certainly it
is difficult to visualize an earth lodge—whether built in a pit or
not—collapsing in such a manner as to produce a smoothly convex mound
like those at the Harroun Site.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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