Nakuukuwidish
Nakuukuwidish ("Place of the Water Salt" in the Caddo Language)[1] is an archeological site, also known as the Holman Springs site (3SV29), in Sevier County, Arkansas. It was a saltworks used by the Caddo people from the mid-1200s to late 1500s. It has been the focus on archeological research by the Arkansas Archeological Survey since the 1980s.
Sevier County is one of two places in southwest Arkansas with a cluster of archeological sites related to salt production[2], likely indicating the presence of a salt diapir, a place where parts of the deeply-buried Louann Salt evaporite deposit were forced upwards through cracks in overlying strata. This brought the salts close enough to the surface to comingle with groundwater, creating salt ponds on the surface. These briny pools could be used to make salt.
Nakuukuwidish sits adjacent to one of these salt ponds, and Caddos living there collected the brine and boiled it in pots to render out the salt, which could either be used for their own purposes or for trade to neighboring communities. The pots were likely single-use and broken to recover the salt from within them. Production was substantial enough that the broken pots accumulated through the site's history created a ten foot-tall mound of broken pottery once stood on the site. That was plowed down in the 1970s, spreading a thick layer of pottery across the entire site.
Archeology
The Arkansas Archeological Survey oversaw a small test dig at the site in 1984 in conjunction with the Arkansas Archeological Society's summer Training Program, held at nearby Washington, Arkansas. The entire Training Program was held there in 1985 and 1986 under the direction of Frank Schambach, a specialist in Caddo Archeology and head of the Survey's research station at Southern Arkansas University, in Magnolia.
In 2022, Carl Drexler, the current head of the SAU Research Station, started a new field research program at Nakuukuwidish to complete the digs begun in the 1980s. This dig uncovered a previously-undiscovered 19th century salt furnace[3] on the site and expanded on Schambach's excavations. The summer Training Program happened there in 2023 and 2024 as well.
References
- ↑ Tahlate, Alaina (2022). "Naming Nakuukuwidish" (PDF). Caddo Archeology Journal. 34: 91–92.
- ↑ Early, Ann (2017). "Saltmaking". Arkansas Archeological Survey. Retrieved 5/8/2026. Check date values in:
|access-date=(help) - ↑ Drexler, Carl (2022). "The Salt Furnace at Holman Springs". Arkansas Archeological Survey. Retrieved 5/8/2027. Check date values in:
|access-date=(help)
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