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The Gahagan Mounds Site ( 16RR1) is an Early
Caddoan Mississippian culture The Caddoan Mississippian culture was a prehistoric Native American culture considered by archaeologists as a variant of the Mississippian culture. The Caddoan Mississippians covered a large territory, including what is now Eastern Oklahoma, Wes ...
archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology and ...
in
Red River Parish, Louisiana Red River Parish ( French: ''Paroisse de la Rivière-Rouge'') is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 9,091, making it the fourth-least populous parish in Louisiana. Its seat is Coushatta. ...
. It is located in the Red River Valley. The site is famous for the three shaft burials and exotic
grave goods Grave goods, in archaeology and anthropology, are the items buried along with the body. They are usually personal possessions, supplies to smooth the deceased's journey into the afterlife or offerings to the gods. Grave goods may be classed as a ...
excavated there in the early twentieth century.


Site description

The Gahagan Site is located on the western side of the Red River, about halfway between Natchitoches and
Shreveport Shreveport ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is the third most populous city in Louisiana after New Orleans and Baton Rouge, respectively. The Shreveport–Bossier City metropolitan area, with a population of 393,406 in 2020, is th ...
. It was once located on an old river channel, but much of the site has been destroyed by the meandering of the river. The site was occupied between 900 and 1200 CE. It consisted of a
platform mound Platform may refer to: Technology * Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run * Platform game, a genre of video games * Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models * Weapons platform, a system o ...
, a cone shaped burial mound, and a habitation area surrounding a centrally located
plaza A town square (or square, plaza, public square, city square, urban square, or ''piazza'') is an open public space, commonly found in the heart of a traditional town but not necessarily a true geometric square, used for community gatherings. ...
, with another small mound located about a quarter mile away.


Excavations

The burial mound at the site has been excavated twice, in 1912 by
Clarence Bloomfield Moore Clarence Bloomfield Moore (January 14, 1852 – March 24, 1936), more commonly known as C.B. Moore, was an American archaeologist and writer. He studied and excavated Native American sites in the Southeastern United States. Early life The ...
and in 1939 by Clarence H. Webb. Between the two excavations, three burial shafts with a total of fourteen burials and more than five hundred grave goods were discovered. The first shaft, found by Moore, was in depth and by in width and height. The other two, found in the 1939 excavations, were by and by in dimensions. The grave goods found during the excavations included intricately flaked flint knives, known since as Gahagan blades, a matched pair of long-nosed god maskette earrings made of sheet copper, Missouri
flint clay Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and start fires ...
statues and pipes, copper ear ornaments, embossed copper plates, greenstone
celt The Celts (, see pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples () are. "CELTS location: Greater Europe time period: Second millennium B.C.E. to present ancestry: Celtic a collection of Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancient ...
s and spuds, and caches of beads and arrow heads. Many of the grave goods were exotic imports from such distant places as the
Gulf Coast The Gulf Coast of the United States, also known as the Gulf South, is the coastline along the Southern United States where they meet the Gulf of Mexico. The coastal states that have a shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico are Texas, Louisiana, Mi ...
, the
Central Texas Central Texas is a region in the U.S. state of Texas surrounding Austin and roughly bordered by San Saba to Bryan and San Marcos to Hillsboro. Central Texas overlaps with and includes part of the Texas Hill Country and corresponds to a p ...
plateau,
Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to t ...
,
Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to ...
, and the
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, and may be indicative of involvement in continent wide trade and religious networks such as the
Southeastern Ceremonial Complex The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (formerly the Southern Cult), aka S.E.C.C., is the name given to the regional stylistic similarity of artifacts, iconography, ceremonies, and mythology of the Mississippian culture. It coincided with their a ...
. Many of the disinterred remains and grave goods were donated to Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science by the
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is a museum affiliated with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1866, the Peabody Museum is one of the oldest and largest museums focusing on anthropological material, wit ...
at
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, and few more later by Dr. Webb.


Gahagan blades

The burial offerings at Gahagan contained particularly beautifully flaked stone knives which have since become known as Gahagan blades. The knives have been found at other Caddoan sites, including the Caddoan Mounds State Historic Site, but are thought to originate to the west of the Caddo territory in central Texas. They were made from
chert Chert () is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide (SiO2). Chert is characteristically of biological origin, but may also occur inorganically as a c ...
from this area and archaeologists believe they were produced as a trade export by groups there.


See also

*
Spiro Mounds Spiro Mounds ( 34 LF 40) is an archaeological site located in present-day eastern Oklahoma that remains from an indigenous Indian culture that was part of the major northern Caddoan Mississippian culture. The 80-acre site is located within a flo ...
*
List of Mississippian sites This is a list of Mississippian sites. The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, inland- Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1500 C ...
*
Mississippian stone statuary The Mississippian stone statuary are artifacts of polished stone in the shape of human figurines made by members of the Mississippian culture (800 to 1600 CE) and found in archaeological sites in the American Midwest and Southeast. Two distinc ...


References

{{Mississippian and related cultures Caddoan Mississippian culture Mounds in Louisiana Geography of Red River Parish, Louisiana 9th-century establishments in North America 12th-century disestablishments in North America 1912 archaeological discoveries 1939 archaeological discoveries