Archaeological Investigation of an Oil Well Pad Disturbance at the Tom Moore Site (41PN149), Panola County, Texas

Abstract

The Tom Moore site (41PN149) is situated on the east slope of a circular-shaped landform at the highest point of a steeply-sloping upland in the Irons Bayou valley in Panola County, Texas. Irons Bayou, 1.2 km to the west of the site, flows east to its confluence with the Sabine River. A small tributary of Irons Bayou is 600 m to the south. Soils here are a brown sandy loam overlying a very hard red clay B-horizon. Like most of East Texas, the land has been farmed previously, as indicated by old plow furrows, and it has reforested naturally in pine and mixed hardwoods in the last 30 years. The site's upland setting is similar to other Middle Caddoan sites in the Sabine River basin in East Texas. An oil field employee, J. W. Golden of Kilgore, Texas, located the Tom Moore site. He noticed a cache of seven large celts that had been disturbed by construction equipment preparing a well site. The oil well construction consisted of two wells and three associated storage tanks. Approximately 2 acres had been disturbed during the leveling process, and part of the hill was used to form the level well pad. A cultural resources management survey had not been required by the Railroad Commission of Texas prior to construction. Mr. Golden described the celts as occurring in a group with the blade ends up. The heavy equipment had grazed them and caused some damage. He collected the celts and informed the authors. We visited the site, made a surface collection, noted a midden area at one end of the disturbance, and collected soil samples for flotation (these materials were submitted to S. Eileen Goldborer of Paleoethnobotanical Services, Austin, Texas) as well as OCR dates. No testing was conducted by the authors to determine the extent of the site. A small, circular mound is located in the wooded area adjacent to the well pad.