Presentation to offer insights on Caddo excavation site in Ouachita County

PHOTO: Taylor Greene, Research Assistant with the Arkansas Archeological Survey, pauses for a photo at Plum Bayou Mounds Archeological State Park in 2025. | Courtesy photo

Taylor Greene of the Arkansas Archeological Survey will present “Caddo Ceramics from Ouachita County: Revisiting the 1987 Training Program” at the February meeting of the Ouachita Chapter of the Arkansas Archeological Society. This talk will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, at 7 p.m. in the Rainey Room in the CIC Building at Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts, 200 Whittington Ave., Hot Springs. The event is free and open to the public.

Georgia Lake is a Caddo site located in northern Ouachita County on the banks of the Ouachita River and was the subject of the 1987 Arkansas Archeological Society Training Program. Over the course of the two-week excavation, dozens of units were opened, thousands of artifacts were excavated, and more than 100 people participated. However, in the 38 years following this excavation very little has ever been written about the site, and no formal analysis of the material has been completed.

This presentation discusses the first analysis of ceramic sherds excavated from the site and broad trends in pottery production there. Based on this analysis, Greene will offer some early conclusions about what ceramics can tell us about the people who made them in the past.

Greene is a Research Assistant at the Arkansas Archeological Survey’s research station at Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia. He has been with the Survey since 2021. He holds degrees from the Universities of Kentucky (BS ’17) and Mississippi (MA ’23), and his research interests include the archeology of the Caddo, ceramics, and the archeology of households and daily life.

The Arkansas Archeological Survey’s research station at Henderson State University holds regular Archaeology Lab Days. Students and members of the public are invited to come by the research station in Proctor Hall on Thursdays between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. to learn more about archaeology in Arkansas. For more information, contact Clay Newton at 870-230-5463.