-
Title
-
Where Did the Choctaw Come From? An Examination of Pottery in the Areas Adjacent to the Choctaw Homeland
-
Date
-
1994
-
Bibliographic Citation
-
Carleton, Kenneth H. 1994. Where Did the Choctaw Come From? An Examination of Pottery in the Areas Adjacent to the Choctaw Homeland. In Perspectives on the Southeast: Linguistics, Archaeologyy, and Ethnohistory, edited by Patricia B. Kwachka, pp. 80-93. University of Georgia Press, Athens.
-
annotates
-
• Begins with the Spanish entradas of the sixteenth century, and the "vacant" Mississippian era.
• Provides probably one of the clearer references to the three districts as they existed at the end of the 18th century:
1) Ahepat Okla (Eastern Division) the western tributaries of the Tombigbee River (Kemper and Lauderdale Counties)
2) Okla Falaya (Western Division) tributaries of the upper Pearl River and extreme north end of the Chunky/Chickasawhay River (Neshoba and Newton Counties)
3) Okla Hannali (Six Towns/Southern) on the central portion of the Chunky/Chickasawhay River (Newton, Jasper, and Clarke Counties)
• Recognizes the "hodge podge" of Choctaw ceramic technology classifications, and simply presents "Addis-like" (pg 82) and shell tempered.
• Grog being common in the Ahepat Okla and Okla Hannali divisions, but not in Okla Falaya, claystone in the Okla Falaya division, and absent in Okla Hannali but rare in Ahepat Okla, and shell tempering as present in all three, but most abundant in the Okla Falaya division.
• Incising and Combing are most common on Addis tempered
• Geometric, rectilinear, punctate, and curvilinear/rectilinear are common motifs (commonly referred to as Natchezan motifs for their similarity) with all motifs and combinations observed across all divisions.
• Draws connections between earlier occupations in the river drainages to Choctaw motifs through Addis and shell tempering, and the Anna and Leland Incised archaeological types.
• Correlates the Upper Tombigbee with more likely later Chickasaw ceramics but notes that the motifs are still very similar.
• In the Central Tombigbee, the Alabama River phase of shell tempered ceramics with loose connections to later Choctaw archaeological types.
• In the Mobile/Tensaw Delta it is the sand and shell tempered Mississippian types associated with the Doctor Lake and the sand tempered ceramics of the Bear Point Phase that demonstrate the most continuity with later Choctaw motifs.