Title: Late Caddoan Occupation Along Cowhide Bayou: An Update on the Belcher Mound and Village Sites
Abstract: In the early 1930s, a northwestern Louisiana farmer cleared an area along Cowhide Bayou near the small town of Belcher. As he attempted to level a rise with a slip, he encountered a human skeleton. Fortunately, although he continued work in the surrounding area, he left the rise alone. Dr. Clarence Webb heard of the find in 1936 and began a project that would continue more than 20 years. It resulted in what remains today as the most completely excavated and reported mound investigation in the Caddoan area. Webb's work at the Belcher Site (l6CD13) not only provided a remarkably detailed picture of the sequence of events relating to construction and use of a prehistoric mound, his analysis of the mound" s stratigraphic layers also served to establish a ceramic chronology for northwestern Louisiana.