Little Pecan Island Site

Last updated
Little Pecan Island Site
16 CM 43
USA Louisiana location map.svg
Archaeological site icon (red).svg
Location within Louisiana today
Location Grand Chenier, Louisiana Flag of the United States.svg  USA
Region Cameron Parish, Louisiana
Coordinates 29°47′41.676″N92°47′37.896″W / 29.79491000°N 92.79386000°W / 29.79491000; -92.79386000
History
Founded800 CE
Abandoned1100 CE
Cultures Coastal Coles Creek culture
Site notes
Excavation dates1946
Archaeologists Robert Wauchope
Responsible body: private

The Little Pecan Island Site (16 CM 43) is an archaeological site of the Coastal Coles Creek culture, occupied by Native Americans from 800 to 1100 CE near Grand Chenier, Louisiana in Cameron Parish. Investigations by Robert Wauchope in 1946 produced a number of flexed burials and ceramic chronologies which helped determine the age and cultural affiliation of the site. [1]

The site is situated on a low sandy ridge about 3 miles (4.8 km) in length and less than 1,500 feet (460 m) in width at its maximum extent and is surrounded on its north and east by Little Pecan Lake. It lies about 5 miles (8.0 km) to the northeast from Grand Chenier Ridge. [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

Vermilion Parish, Louisiana Parish in Louisiana, United States

Vermilion Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana, created in 1844. The parish seat is Abbeville. Vermilion Parish is part of the Lafayette metropolitan statistical area, and located in southern Acadiana. At the 2010 U.S. census, the population was 57,999; the 2019 American Community Survey estimated its population was 59,865.

Cameron Parish, Louisiana Parish in Louisiana, United States

Cameron Parish is a parish in the southwest corner of the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 5,617. The parish seat is Cameron. Although it is the largest parish by area in Louisiana, it has the second-smallest population in the state, ahead of only Tensas.

Grand Bay, Alabama Census-designated place in Alabama, United States

Grand Bay is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Mobile County, Alabama, United States. It is part of the Mobile metropolitan area. The population was 3,460 at the 2020 census.

Jonesville, Louisiana Town in Louisiana, United States

Jonesville is the largest town in Catahoula Parish, Louisiana, United States, at the confluence of the Ouachita, Tensas, and Little rivers. The three rivers become the Black River at Jonesville.

Colfax, Louisiana Town

Colfax is a town in, and the parish seat of, Grant Parish, Louisiana, United States, founded in 1869. Colfax is part of the Alexandria, Louisiana metropolitan area. The largely African American population of Colfax counted 1,558 at the 2010 census.

Grand Isle, Louisiana Town in Louisiana, United States

Grand Isle is a town in Jefferson Parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana, located on a barrier island of the same name in the Gulf of Mexico. The island is at the mouth of Barataria Bay where it meets the gulf. The town of Grand Isle is statistically part of the New Orleans−Metairie−Kenner metropolitan statistical area, though it is not connected to New Orleans' continuous urbanized area.

River Ridge, Louisiana Census-designated place in Louisiana, United States

River Ridge is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is a suburb of New Orleans. The population was 13,591 in 2020.

Brunswick, Missouri City in Missouri, United States

Brunswick is a rural city in Chariton County, Missouri, United States. Its population was 801 at the 2020 census. Brunswick, by official state proclamation, is the Pecan Capital of Missouri. The Missouri Farmers Association was founded in Brunswick in 1914.

Comanche, Oklahoma Town in Oklahoma, United States

Comanche is a city in Stephens County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 1,663 at the 2010 census.

Zydeco is a music genre that evolved in southwest Louisiana by French Creole speakers which blends blues, rhythm and blues, and music indigenous to the Louisiana Creoles and the Native American people of Louisiana. Although it is distinct in origin from the Cajun music of Louisiana, the two forms influenced each other, forming a complex of genres native to the region.

Chenier

A chenier or chénier is a sandy or shelly beach ridge that is part of a strand plain, called a “chenier plain,” consisting of cheniers separated by intervening mud-flat deposits with marsh and swamp vegetation. Cheniers are typically 1 to 6 m high, tens of km long, hundreds of metres wide, and often wooded. Chenier plains can be tens of km wide. Cheniers and associated chenier plains are associated with shorelines characterized by generally low wave energy, low gradient, muddy shorelines, and abundant sediment supply. The name is derived from the French word for wood, “chêne,” meaning oak, which grows on chenier ridges within southwest Louisiana.

Pecan Island is an unincorporated community with a population of about 300 located in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is located directly under the southern peak of White Lake and two ridges comprise the island, which are actually cheniers or "ridges of high ground" in the coast marsh. There is minimal land in the region, with the island being "an old Gulf beach, composed of crushed shells and sand".

Poverty Point culture Archaeological culture that inhabited the lower Mississippi Valley

The Poverty Point culture is the archaeological culture of a prehistoric indigenous peoples who inhabited a portion of North America's lower Mississippi Valley and surrounding Gulf coast from about 1730 - 1350 BC.

Louisiana Highway 82

Louisiana Highway 82 (LA 82) is a state highway located in southern Louisiana. It runs 142.87 miles (229.93 km) in a general east–west direction from the Texas state line east of Port Arthur to the Vermilion–Lafayette parish line southwest of Youngsville.

Lake Fausse Pointe State Park

Lake Fausse Pointe State Park is located in Iberia Parish, Louisiana and St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, USA. It is located about 18 miles (29 km) east of St. Martinville adjacent to the Atchafalaya Basin. The park is 6,000 acres (2,400 ha) in size and was once the home of the Chitimacha Indians.

Bussell Island United States historic place

Bussell Island, formerly Lenoir Island, is an island located at the mouth of the Little Tennessee River, at its confluence with the Tennessee River in Loudon County, near the U.S. city of Lenoir City, Tennessee. The island was inhabited by various Native American cultures for thousands of years before the arrival of early European explorers. The Tellico Dam and a recreational area occupy part of the island. Part of the island was added in 1978 to the National Register of Historic Places for its archaeological potential.

The Grand Gulf Mound (22CB522) is an Early Marksville culture archaeological site located near Port Gibson in Claiborne County, Mississippi, on a bluff 1 mile (1.6 km) east of the Mississippi River, 2 miles (3.2 km) north of the mouth of the Big Black River. The site has an extant burial mound, and may have possibly had two others in the past. The site is believed to have been occupied from 50 to 200 CE. Copper objects, Marksville culture ceramics and a stone platform pipe were found in excavations at the site. The site is believed to be the only site in the Natchez Bluffs region to have been actively involved in the Hopewell Interaction Sphere. It is one of four mounds in the area believed to date to the Early Marksville period, the other three being the Marskville Mound 4 and Crooks Mounds A and B, all located in nearby Louisiana. The mound itself was built in several stages over many years, very similar to the Crooks Mound A in La Salle Parish, Louisiana. Unlike some other Hopewell sites, such as the Tremper Mound in Scioto County, Ohio, the site showed no evidence of a mortuary or communal structure previous to the construction of the mound. The beginning stage is believed to have been a rectangular earthen platform .5 feet (0.15 m) in height, 20 feet (6.1 m) wide on its east–west axis and 3.5 feet (1.1 m) long on its north–south axis. After a period of use, this platform was covered with a mantle of earth 5.5 feet (1.7 m) in height and 26.5 feet (8.1 m) wide along its east–west axis, with an extremely hard cap of earth 0.2 feet (0.061 m) covering the mound. During a third stage another mantle of earth was added to the mound, bringing it to a height of 10 feet (3.0 m) and to approximately 32 feet (9.8 m) in width on its east–west axis.

Poverty Point Prehistoric site of the Poverty Point culture in northeastern Louisiana, United States

Poverty Point State Historic Site/Poverty Point National Monument is a prehistoric earthwork constructed by the Poverty Point culture. The Poverty Point site is located in present-day northeastern Louisiana though evidence of the Poverty Point culture extends throughout much of the Southeastern Woodlands. The culture extended 100 miles (160 km) across the Mississippi Delta and south to the Gulf Coast. The Poverty Point site has been designated as a state historic site, U.S. National Monument, a U.S. National Historic Landmark, and UNESCO World Heritage Site. Located in the Southern United States, the site is 15.5 miles (24.9 km) from the current flow of the Mississippi River, and is situated on the edge of Macon Ridge, near the village of Epps in West Carroll Parish, Louisiana.

Little Woods is an unincorporated community in New Orleans on the shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain. It is bordered by Paris Road/Highway 47 to the East, Downman Road to the West, and Interstate 10 and Morrison Road to the South. The name in French, "La Petite Bois" or The Little Woods can be found on the 1883 Lafon-Alphonse Michoud Map drafted by civil-engineer George N. Grandjean. "Little Woods", as a place designation that continues in local use. Little Woods also directly relates to the treed hammocks that were high Chénier ridges bordered by water and wetlands.

Morgan Mounds is an important archaeological site of the Coastal Coles Creek culture, built and occupied by Native Americans from 700 to 1000 CE on Pecan Island in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana. Of the 45 recorded Coastal Coles Creek sites in the Petite Anse region, it is the only one with ceremonial substructure mounds. These indicate that it was possibly the center of a local chiefdom.

References

  1. Gomez, Gay M. (1998). A Wetland Biography : Seasons on Louisiana's Chenier Plain. University of Texas Press. p. 49. ISBN   978-0-292-72812-7.
  2. Wauchope, R. (1947). "Notes on Little Pecan Island, Louisiana". American Antiquity. 12(3Part1) (3): 186–188. doi:10.2307/275710. JSTOR   275710. S2CID   163233506.