An Analysis of the Aboriginal Ceramics from the Washington Square Mound Site

In the introduction to John P. Hart's study on Nacogdoches's historic Washington Square Mound, Timothy K. Perttula notes that publication of Hart's finding is long overdue. The Washington Square mound site, he describes, "is a Caddo multiple mound center" and is "one of the few known Caddo mound sites in the Neches-Angelina river basins in East Texas, and the study of its archeological deposits has contributed important and unique information on the lifeways, social and political organization, and religious beliefs of ancestral Caddo peoples" who occupied the area circa A.D. 1250-1425. Hart's research reveals invaluable details about Caddo tribal life, particularly derived from decorative and engraved pottery retrieved from the Mound, and, for the first time, makes this information available to a wider audience.