SAU Research Station - Arkansas Archeological Survey

Hodges Engraved bottle recovered from Cedar Grove.

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Important Past Projects

Cedar Grove:
Two Cemeteries, Two Hundred Years Apart

The Cedar Grove site (state site number 3LA97) was located in Lafayette County on the banks of the Red River. The site, consisting of both a late Caddo farmstead (with an accompanying cemetery) and an early twentieth century African-American cemetery, was discovered during construction of the Field Revetment by the New Orleans District of the Corps of Engineers. As the site was slated for destruction, both components had to be moved. Excavations were conducted intermittently between June of 1980 and June of 1982 by a comprehensive interdisciplinary team that recovered data on the historic remains, settlement systems, lithics, ceramics, geomorphology, chronology, floral and faunal remains, pigments and bioarchaeology.

Hodges Engraved bottle recovered from Cedar Grove's Caddo occupation. Click on the image for a larger view.

Because they were carefully excavated by archeologists, we can find out a lot of information about who these people were and what their lives were like. Those who were laid to rest at the historic-period Cedar Grove Cemetery were reburied within one day of their exhumation as per an agreement with the elders of the Cedar Grove Bapitist Church. The prehistoric-period burials and associated materials are slated to be repatriated to the Caddo Nation.

The Cedar Grove site also shows us how dynamic the Red River is and has been over time. These two sites, once on the banks of the Red River, laid buried under flood deposits for almost 100 years before the river again exposed the remains.

Click on the links below to look at either the prehistoric Native American portion of the excavations or the early twentieth century African-American cemetery.

Cedar Grove: A Late Caddo Farmstead

Cedar Grove Cemetery: Gone to a Better Land