The Caddo area of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana was home to a diverse people and culture that had its origins in the A.D. 900s and continues today. It developed peripheral to the great Mississippian cultures that dominated the Southeast, and it had strong linkages to Cahokia, near St. Louis, the most important Mississippian center. Yet recent research suggests that Caddo-Mississippian connections were strongest in the 14th century, well after the decline of Cahokia.
Caddo Connections examines the evidence that linked the Caddo region to the Southeast, the southern plains, and the Southwest, revealing complex cultural and trading connections with all these neighboring areas. The authors see the Caddo area not as a homogeneous ethnographic region, but rather as a multifarious one inhabited by people who shared distinctive stylistic traits, settlement configurations, developmental sequences, and mortuary customs.
Throughout this volume the authors recount both old and new research that has resulted in an evolving view of the Caddo by archaeologists since World War II. The new research at a variety of sites has greatly expanded the view of the Caddo area and its people. The history of archaeological research is one of the most interesting aspects of this work.
The authors have succeeded in giving the reader the most up-to-date view of one of North America’s most interesting and complicated cultural areas. It will be a major reference work on the Caddo for many years to come.
