Engraved and fenestrated shell gorget from Spiro Mounds, ancestral Caddo or Wichita Shell gorgets are a Native American art form of polished, carved shell pendants worn around the neck. The gorgets are frequently engraved, and are sometimes highlighted with pigments, or fenestrated (pierced with openings). Shell gorgets were most common in Eastern Woodlands of the United States, during the Hopewell tradition (200 BCE– 500 CE) and Mississippian cultural period (ca. 800–1500 CE); however, tribes from other regions and time periods also carved shell gorgets.
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Adena cultures created gorgets from slate and copper, but the Hopewell Exchange System brought exotic shells from the Gulf northward. Initially, Hopewellian peoples carved plain shell gorgets around 1000 BCE. Engraved gorgets appeared in the late Hopewell.Dubin 159 A Glacial Kame Culture marine-shell gorget from the Great Lakes dates from 1000 BCE and features an engraved bear or opossum with an umbilical cord.
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Mask gorget with forked-eye motifs, from the Nodena Site in Arkansas As Mississippian shell gorgets were traded widely, common designs have a widespread geographical distribution. Calusa people of southern Florida harvested and carved gorgets.Dubin, 202 Coiled rattlesnakes gorgets were found among the Guale Indians of Georgia.Dubin, 200 Mask gorgets, although rare,Smith and Smith were only able to secure and examine 69 masks in their 1989 study.
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Contemporary gorget by Bennie Pokemire (Eastern Band Cherokee), featuring a Mississippian warrior with a forked eye motif Turtle shells and stones have also infrequently been carved into gorgets. In the 18th century, metal medallions replaced shell gorgets among Eastern tribes.Power (2007), 214 In the late 19th century, women from tribes along the Colorado River, such as the Quechan wore defenestrated gorgets made from bivalve shells and strung on vegetal cordage.
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Influential Seminole leader Osceola wearing three metal gorgets in a portrait by George Catlin. The British Empire awarded gorgets to chiefs of American Indian tribes both as tokens of goodwill and a badge of their high status.p.9 Handbook of North American Indians: History of Indian- White Relations Government Printing Office, 1978 Those being awarded a gorget were known as gorget captains p. 286 Blegen, Theodore Christian & Heilbron, Bertha Lion Minnesota History Minnesota Historical Society, 1928 Gorgets were also awarded to African chiefsp.
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This type of gorget is carved in what is now known as the Hightower style. Holmes also uncovered several "rattlesnake" and mask style gorgets as well as a curious gorget with looping lines that Holmes described as "very interesting object.....The figure is so obscure that considerable study is necessary in making it out." These pieces are in the styles now known as the Lick Creek style and Citico style for the rattlesnake gorgets, Chickamauga style for the mask-like gorgets and Williams Island or Spaghetti style for the last.
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Their jewelry included beads, hair pins, pendants, tinklers, and bone and shell gorgets. Gourds from their garden and turtle shell were used for ceremonial rattles.
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The complex operated as an exchange network. This kind of network may be illustrated by a pair of shell gorgets whose representation is so similar as to suggest that they were made by the same artist. One is found in southeast Missouri and the other in Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma. Numerous other pairs of extremely similar gorgets serve to link sites across the entire Southeast.
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Chapman, pp.49-52. Woodland period artifacts include projectile points, drills, scrapers, axes, gorgets, and a bird effigy. Several Woodland-period burials were also uncovered at Rose Island.
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Archaeologists speculate they were used either for gorgets or headdress ornaments. Analysis of the metal in the plaques has connected them to locations in the Great Lakes region, Wisconsin and the Appalachian Mountains. Timucua wearing embossed metal gorgets ca. 1562 A little further down the Atlantic coast was the Mount Royal Mound (8 PU 35), a site occupied on and off since 4000 BCE, and during the historic period a Timucua settlement.
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Trade items recovered from burial mounds include copper panpipes, ear ornaments, stone plummets, and stone gorgets. These show this area's incorporation within the Hopewellian Interaction Sphere by about 1,900 years ago.
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4, No. 2 (Jan. 1898). This harp and crown motif was prevalent on the Volunteer companies flags, belt-plates and gorgets. Some included the Royal cypher "G.R." standing for King George III.
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"Displaying the Source of the Sacred: Shell Gorgets, Peace Medals, and the Accessing of Supernatural Power." Ed. Robert Pickering. Peace Medals: Negotiating Power in Early America. Tulsa, OK: Gilcrease Museum. p. 17.
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Their jewelry included beads, hair pins, pendants, tinklers, and shell gorgets. These were also made of both bone and shell. Gourds from their garden and turtle shell were used for ceremonial rattles.
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Due to the placement of the holes in the gorgets, they are also thought to be spinners that could produce whistling sounds.Dozier, Debye. "Northern, Eastern, and Southern Woodlands." Palomar College, American Indian Department.
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Another design widely agreed upon is the water spider with a cross-in-circle design on its cephalothorax. Spider gorgets have a widespread distribution but are commonly found in what is now Illinois.
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Grady Smith from Florida draws on numerous sources for his shell gorgets,White, Matt. "Art on the Terrace." Wakulla Wildlife Festival. 4 Dec 2010 (retrieved 23 July 2010) including designs from Calusa wood carvings.
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Contemporary miniature gorget (by a non-Native claiming Muscogee Creek descent) featuring a cross-in- circle motif Iconography on the shell gorgets comes from the Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere. Extremely common designs include the triskele, coiled rattlesnake, spider, chunkey player, and birdman, sometimes called a Falcon Impersonater. Native Americans, art historians, and anthropologists all have a wide range of often conflicting interpretations of the Mississippian iconography. Coiled rattlesnake gorgets were often found in the graves of young people and are believed to relate to age as opposed to status.
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The legendary horse had its own, separate stable, and after its death in 1939, Krechowiak was handed to Polish Army Museum in Warsaw, where it was stuffed and presented to visitors. To commemorate the Battle of Krechowce, special gorgets were made, with Black Madonna of Częstochowa. The gorgets were handed to officers and uhlans after 20 years of service. In the Second Polish Republic, 1st Uhlan Regiment maintained special ties with 12th Podole Uhlan Regiment and 14th Yazlovets Uhlan Regiment: the three units had fought the Bolsheviks at Komarów.
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A number of social functions have been suggested for the gorget. It may aid in mate attraction or in resource defense. It may signal social status or allow species to identify conspecifics. Among hummingbirds, gorgets are typically found only on males.
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The beads were mostly associated with the skeletons of children. There were also pipes, shell gorgets, and potsherds.Stewart, Thomas Dale. Archeological Exploration of Patawomeke the Indian Town Site (44St2), Ancestral to the One (44St1) Visited in 1608 by Captain John Smith.
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Dickens 150, 156 Shell artifacts were sculpted from marine mollusk shells: large shell beads shaped into spheres or discs and strung into necklaces and bracelets were made from Busycon (or conch) columella. A single shell pin was found in Mound No. 1, as well as a conch bowl.Dickens 158 Mounds No. 1 and 2 held Marginella shells and conch shell gorgets. Several gorgets were incised with coiled rattlesnakes in the Lick Creek style, and one featured a stylized human figure.Dickens 164 Woven rivercane mats left impressions in Earth Lodge 2 and some charred remains were found on a house floor.
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In the British service they carried the Royal coat of arms until 1796 and thereafter the Royal Cypher. Gorgets ceased to be worn by British army officers in 1830 and by their French counterparts 20 years later. They were still worn to a limited extent in the Imperial German Army until 1914, as a special distinction by officers of the Prussian Gardes du Corps and the 2nd Cuirassiers "Queen". Officers of the Spanish infantry continued to wear gorgets with the cypher of King Alfonso XIII in full dress, until the overthrow of the Monarchy in 1931.
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Silver was much valued by the Iroquois from the 17th century onward, and starting in the 18th century, the Iroquois became "excellent silversmiths", making silver earrings, gorgets and rings. At harvest time, Iroquois women would use corn husks to make hats, dolls, rope and moccasins.
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Quilled knife cases were worn around the neck. Chiefs wore headdresses made of deer antler. By the 18th century, Iroquois men normally wore shirts and leggings made of broadcloth and buckskin coats. In the 17th and 18th centuries silver armbands and gorgets were popular accessories.
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German police gorgets of this period typically were flat metal crescents with ornamental designs that were suspended by a chain worn around the neck. The Prussian-influenced Chilean army uses the German style metal gorget in parades and in the uniform of their Military Police.
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The earliest shell gorgets date back to 3000 years BP. They are believed to have been insignia of status or rank,C. Andrew Buchner, "Cox Mound Gorget." The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. (retrieved 23 July 2010) either civic, military, or religious, or amulets of protective medicine.
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Views of a Sinistrofulgur perversum shell Lightning whelk (Sinistrofulgur perversum) is the most common shell used for gorgets. Other shells, such as the true conch or Strombus, as well as freshwater mussels, are also carved into gorgets.Dreiss, Meredith L. "Marine Shell Ornaments, Icons and Offerings." Texas Beyond History.
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Officer's gorget for majors and lieutenant-colonels of the Swedish Army, with the royal cypher of Frederick I of Sweden. Two palm branches, denoting rank, around the cypher have disappeared. Swedish Army Museum. As early as 1688, regulations provided for the wearing of gorgets by Swedish army officers.
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The adult graves also had shell ear pins, turtle-shell rattles, shell bowls and perforated animal bones. The infant's grave objects included calumella shell beads, shell gorgets and perforated marginella shells. Included within certain graves in some sites show a social ranking having stone, clay, bone, shell and wood artifacts.
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Dr Michael (WVU) found a few bodies with arrowheads embedded within. This also gives evidence of a culture changing. This very late protohistoric period dated to about 350 B.P.(MicMichael 1968:34,45). The found Buffalo Mask and exotic marine shell gorgets give evidence of contact with the Late Mississippian culture.
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In the rare instances where they are found on females, they appear to serve primarily for signaling threats. Young hummingbirds, which need to intrude on adult territories to feed once they have fledged, all lack gorgets. This may help to make them less visible or less threatening to adult birds.
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Lewis and Lewis 1961, p. 25. Stone artifacts included atlatl weights, gorgets, and pestles.Lewis and Lewis 1961, p. 70. Bone artifacts included awls, needles, fishhooks, and a necklace composed of snake vertebrae.Lewis and Lewis 1961, p. 76, 88. Antler artifacts included scrapers, projectile points, and atlatl hooks.Lewis and Lewis 1961, p. 92.
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For example, instead of sashes (Riemenzeug), web belt material (Webgurtmaterial) was issued. There were no bread bags or spades - both were initially fashioned or improvised out of anything possible. As a badge, troops wore the Tyrolean eagle of Tyrolese units on grass green gorgets. The Vorarlberg troops wore the Vorarlberg coat of arms.
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The Dallas Phase settlements typically have one to three platform mounds; however, some (40Un11 and 40An44) have no mounds at all. Their society was hierarchical and is characterized by distinctions between nobles and commoners in burial practices. Elites were buried in mounds, unlike the remaining population.Peregrine 49 Artifacts included shell gorgets, ear pins, and beads.
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Dubin, 163 Gorgets are carved from the penultimate whorl of the shell.Fundaburk and Foreman, Pl. 155-6 A blank is cut or broken out, then ground smooth. Holes for suspension and decoration are drilled, sometimes with a bow drills or chert drills. The gorget forms a concave shape and, when engraved, the interior is polished and decorated.
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The Adena ground stone tools and axes. Somewhat rougher slab-like stones with chipped edges were probably used as hoes. Bone and antler were used in small tools, but even more prominently in ornamental objects such as beads, combs, and worked animal-jaw gorgets or paraphernalia. Spoons, beads and other implements were made from the marine conch.
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Using the themes of physical prowess, fertility, and the afterlife, they identified with the Birdman ideology and displayed this symbolically through the wearing of special shell gorgets and the repoussé copper plates. Since the majority of the copper plates found in Mound C were near the skulls of the buried remains, archaeologists believe they were used as headdresses.
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It greatly increased the understanding of pre-Contact Native American artwork. In 1947, the government built the Allatoona Dam upstream for flood control. The Etowah site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964. The Etowah Indian Mounds museum displays artifacts found at the site, including Mississippian culture pottery, monolithic stone axes, Mississippian stone statuary, copper jewelry, shell gorgets, and other artifacts.
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In the Soviet Ukraine colored collar patches (though without gorgets) were used, as in other parts of the USSR. Historically Ukrainian national units during the period 1918-1920 and again 1941-45 wore collar patches resembling the gorget patches of other armies. These included the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, the Ukrainian People's Army, the Sich Riflemen,and the Ukrainian Galician Army.
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Members of this species, like other bee-eaters, are rich and brightly-coloured slender birds. They have green upper parts, yellow throats, black gorgets, and rich brown upper breasts fading to buffish ochre on the belly. Their wings are green and brown, and their beaks are black. They reach a length of 15–17 cm, which makes them the smallest African bee-eater.
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Plate gorgets were introduced from c. 1400–1410, which replaced the camail and moved the weight of the throat and neck defences from the head to the shoulders. At the same time a plate covering the cheeks and lower face was introduced also called the bavière (contemporary usage was not precise). This bavière was directly attached by rivets to the skull of the bascinet.
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Chief Satanta (White Bear) wearing an Indian Peace Medal Indian peace medals refer to ovular or circular medals awarded to tribal leaders throughout colonial America and early United States history, primarily made of silver or brass and ranging in diameter from about one to six inches.Reilly, Kent (2011). "Displaying the Source of the Sacred: Shell Gorgets, Peace Medals, and the Accessing of Supernatural Power." Ed. Robert Pickering.
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Like many hummingbirds, the male Costa's hummingbird has an iridescent gorget. A gorget is a patch of colored feathers found on the throat or upper breast of some species of birds. It is a feature found on many male hummingbirds, particularly those found in North America; these gorgets are typically iridescent. Other species, such as the purple-throated fruitcrow and chukar partridge, also show the feature.
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This "little act of decisive gallantry" had "tended to increase the confidence of the troops, and certainly reflected high honor on the small detachment."Wilkinson pp.133–34 Eight years later, at a reception held for General Lafayette, John Lardner and William Leiper—the sons of two Light Horse cavalrymen who were part of the reconnaissance mission—wore the gorgets of British officers captured that day.First Troop p.
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Fourche Maline culture gorgets and bannerstones In the late 1930s archeologists with the federal Work Projects Administration excavated a series of sites in the Wister Valley of southeastern Oklahoma. The middens at these sites were unusually thick and dark, and were called "black mounds" by the excavators. They contained a blend of Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian culture artifacts. These sites became the type sites for the Fourche Maline culture.
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Burial mounds have yielded trade items which include copper panpipes, ear ornaments, stone plummets, and stone gorgets. These show this area's incorporation within the Hopewellian Interaction Sphere by about AD 100.National Park Service: Woodland The Santa Rosa-Swift Creek culture extended over the western half of the Florida panhandle and immediately adjacent parts of Alabama. Sites have been found primarily around estuaries from St. Andrews Bay to Pensacola Bay.
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Young Seminole jeweler, SWAIA Winter Market, 2011 Contemporary Shell gorget carved by Bennie Pokemire (Eastern Band Cherokee) In the Mississippian culture of the Southeast, dating from 800 BCE to 1500 CE, clay, stone, and pearl beads were worn. Shell gorgets were incised with bold imagery from the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. These are still carved today by several Muscogee Creek, Chickasaw, and Cherokee jewelers. Long-nosed god maskettes were made from bone, copper and marine shells.
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In the past, the community also consisted of "Anderson", a post office stop founded along the B&O; tracks from 1874–1881 along modern Anderson Avenue, and operated as "Hanoverville" until December 1896. Hanover is located along the fall line where the ocean met the shore in prehistoric times. Native American tribes lived along the lower Patapsco river. archeological digs in 1929 have discovered arrowheads, spearpoints, axes, and gorgets along the Disney farm.
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Mexican Federal army officers also wore the gorget with the badge of their branch as part of their parade uniform until 1947. German military police gorget from WW2. The gorget was revived as a uniform accessory in Nazi Germany, seeing widespread use within the German military and Nazi party organisations. During World War II, it continued to be used by Feldgendarmerie (military field police), who wore metal gorgets as emblems of authority.
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Females also have iridescent red gorgets, though they are usually smaller and less brilliant than the males'. Anna's is the only North American hummingbird species with a red crown. Females and juvenile males have a dull green crown, a grey throat with or without some red iridescence, a grey chest and belly, and a dark, rounded tail with white tips on the outer feathers. These birds feed on nectar from flowers using a long extendable tongue.
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Later versions of the bascinet, especially the great bascinet, were designed to maximise coverage and therefore protection. In achieving this they sacrificed the mobility and comfort of the wearer; thus, ironically, returning to the situation that the wearers of the cumbersome great helm experienced and that the early bascinets were designed to overcome.Rothero, p. 3. It is thought that poorer men-at-arms continued to employ lighter bascinets with mail camails long after the richest had adopted plate gorgets.
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Great value was prescribed by the peace medals, which were to be buried with the owner or passed down from generation to generation. A considerable amount of portraiture made of Native American figures accentuating the medals worn around their neck serves as a testament to their importance. Peace medals assumed a role within many Native American ethea akin to earlier worn shell gorgets, associating the wearer of the medal with the individual engraved on its surface.Reilly, Kent (2011).
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The presence of exotic copper items in the two mounds along with busycon shells has led archaeologists to believe the peoples of the Mill Cove Complex were involved in long distance trade with Mississippian culture peoples to their west. Whelk shells and yaupon holly, two local products, were valuable elite commodities to the peoples of the Mississippian cultures, used to make shell gorgets, ritual drinking vessels, beads and columnella pendants and the ingredient for the black drink.
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Deep Run is an tributary of the Patapsco River in central Maryland in the United States. The main stem arises in the vicinity of Ellicott City, starting in the Montgomery Meadows housing development, and the lower course forms part of the border between Howard and Anne Arundel Counties. It passes underneath Route 100 twice, Interstate 95 once, and Route 1 once as well. Archeological digs in 1929 discovered arrowheads, spearpoints, axes, and gorgets along the Disney farm.
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Near the Forest trail entrance, is a model of a Native American hunting lodge from the 17th century and wooden tipi, built by Tom Blue Wolf and his workmen. In September 2008, a replica Indian village was opened at the park. In the Visitor Center, a small exhibit of the Forsten collection is on display. The collection was donated by the Forsten family in 2011, and has almost 300 pieces of Southeastern American Indian projectile points, gorgets, atlatl weights and other artifacts.
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Other forms of identifiable chipped-stone tools recovered at Ellerbusch include knives, drills, scrapers, one shredder (a tool similar to a scraper, but used for tearing instead of scraping), and numerous flakes with signs of having once been parts of hoes. Ground stone artifacts were observed of types such as pestles, nutting stones, and hammerstones, as well as miscellaneous objects such as pieces of two Woodland gorgets, a single copper bead, and a small pipe of a form frequently found at Angel and similar Mississippian sites.
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Nicolle (2000), P. 20. Early gorgets were wide, copying the shape of the earlier aventail, however, with the narrowing of the neck opening the gorget plates had to be hinged to allow the helmet to be put on. Early great bascinets had the skull of the helmet riveted to the rear gorget plate, however, some later great bascinets had the skull forged in a single piece with the rear gorget plate. The gorget was often strapped to both the breast and backplate of the cuirass.
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In the early 1890s and again in 1916-1917, amateur archaeologist William E. Myer (later a “special archeologist” with the Smithsonian,) excavated parts of the site, including the stone box graves. He also excavated the large burial mound, which contained well over a hundred graves. Myer discovered several artifacts containing S.E.C.C. imagery, including many shell gorgets which were later acquired by the Museum of the American Indian in 1926. The State of Tennessee purchased the site in 2005, and modern excavations were instituted by the Middle Tennessee State University.
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Gorget patches were originally gorgets, pieces of armour worn to protect the throat. With the disuse of armour they were lost. The cloth patch on the collar however evolved from contrasting cloth used to reinforce the buttonholes at the collar of a uniform coat. (This is perhaps most evident in the traditional Commonwealth design for Colonels, which has a button and a narrow line of darker piping where the slit buttonhole would have been.) In the British Empire the patches were introduced as insignia during the South African War (1889-1902).
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Copper earspools from Spiro Besides the repoussé copper plates, Mississippian people also created copper axes, knives, gorgets, beads, and fishhooks, as well as wooden beads and ear spools covered in copper.Welch (1991), Moundville's Economy : 69, 168 Long-nosed god maskettes, a special kind of ear ornamentation, are sometimes found made of copper. Copper examples have been found at the Gahagan Mounds Site in Louisiana and at the Grant Mound in Florida, each of which produced two of the earpieces. Several copper covered cedar knives were found in the Great Mortuary mound at Spiro.
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S.E.C.C. falcon dancer copper plate found in Mound 3 The "Elder Birdman" plate found in Mound 3 Artifacts found at the Lake Jackson site include plain and repoussé copper plates, copper headdress badges, engraved shell gorgets, pearl beads, copper axes, and stone and ceramic pipes. Many of these pieces had motifs representative of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex or SECC. Similar artifacts have been found at the Spiro Site in Oklahoma, the Moundville Site in Alabama and Etowah Mounds in northwestern Georgia. Stylistic analysis has shown that of the three, Lake Jackson had the closest ties with Etowah.
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Knights usually wore the great helm over a mail coif (hood) sometimes in conjunction with a close-fitting iron skull cap known as a cervelliere. The later development of the cervelliere, the bascinet, was also worn beneath the great helm; men-at-arms would often remove the great helm after the first clash of lances, for greater vision and freedom of movement in melee combat. The bascinet had a mail curtain attached, a camail or aventail, which superseded the coif. Mail throat and neck defences such as these were made obsolete when plate gorgets were introduced, around 1400.
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Hopewell pipe, points, and earspool on display at Serpent Mound Gorgets and points from the Adena culture, found at Serpent Mound After raising sufficient funds, in 1886 Putnam returned to the same site. He worked for four years excavating the contents and burial sequences of both the Serpent Mound and two nearby conical mounds. After his work was completed and his findings documented, Putnam worked on restoring the mounds to their original state. One of the conical mounds that was excavated by Putnam (1890) yielded a principal burial which has grave goods that associate it with the Adena period (800 BC-100 BC).
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There is much evidence against the authenticity of the Lenape Stone. Mammoths are thought to have become extinct in North America around 10,000 years ago, while most gorgets uncovered in archaeological digs are less than 2,000 years old. In addition, other artifacts found in the same field as the Lenape Stone bore stylistically similar carvings, and these were all dated to around 2,000 years ago. There were no witnesses to verify the circumstances under which either fragment of the stone was found, and after it was found, the stone was cleaned multiple times, making geological tests virtually impossible.
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In 1910, the so-called field-grey peace uniform (feldgraue Friedensuniform), with colored cuffs, facings, shoulder straps and gorgets was issued by decree in Prussia, followed by the non-Prussian contingents of the other German states and lastly by the Bavarian Army in April 1916. Formerly most infantry regiments in the German Imperial Army wore "Prussian blue" tunics, although Bavarian units had light blue and jägers dark green. Cavalry uniforms were of a wide range of colours. Until the outbreak of war in August 1914, the traditional brightly coloured uniforms of the Deutsches Heer continued to be worn as parade and off-duty wear.
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Some of the terraces and aprons on the mound seem to have been added to stop slumping of the enormous mound. Although the mounds were primarily meant as substructure mounds for buildings or activities, sometimes burials did occur. Intrusive burials occurred when a grave was dug into a mound and the body or a bundle of defleshed, disarticulated bones was deposited into it. Mound C at Etowah has been found to have more than 100 intrusive burials into the final layer of the mound, with many grave goods such as Mississippian copper plates (Etowah plates), monolithic stone axes, ceremonial pottery and carved whelk shell gorgets.
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Sturtevant and Fogelson, 132 Despite the consensus among most specialists in Southeast archeology and anthropology, some scholars contend that ancestors of the Cherokee people lived in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee for a far longer period of time.Finger, 6–7 During the late Archaic and Woodland Period, Native Americans in the region began to cultivate plants such as marsh elder, lambsquarters, pigweed, sunflowers, and some native squash. People created new art forms such as shell gorgets, adopted new technologies, and developed an elaborate cycle of religious ceremonies. During the Mississippian culture-period (800 to 1500 CE), local women developed a new variety of maize (corn) called eastern flint corn.
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Some of these may have been worn on a daily basis but also may have been a part of a costume for a ceremony. In early Historic times, sometimes Jesuit rings have been found, indicating profession of Catholic faith as a result of French missionary activities. Works of art have been found at Upper Mississippian sites and it is probable that most of them were not looked upon simply for enjoyment or cultural appreciation, but for objects used by medicine men and/or to be used in ceremonies. These include mask gorgets with artistic motifs, engraved pebbles, and animal or bird figurines made of bone, shell or copper.
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Birdman gorget from Hixon Site similar to one found at McMahan Excavations by William H. Holmes in 1881 unearthed burials, arrow-points, a marble pipe, Mississippian culture pottery, and numerous engraved shell gorgets and columnella pendants. Several items of European manufacture were found in the excavations, including brass pins and cylindrical glass beads, implying that the mound site had been inhabited during the time of European contact in the American Southeast. One fragmentary engraved shell gorget found during the excavations was particularly noteworthy. It depicts two S.E.C.C. "Birdmen" with wings and talons for feet grasping each other by the neck with one hand and wielding ceremonial flint blades with the other.
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The fourth color cone would extend the range of visible colors for hummingbirds to perceive ultraviolet light and color combinations of feathers and gorgets, colorful plants, and other objects in their environment, enabling detection of as many as five non-spectral colors, including purple, ultraviolet-red, ultraviolet-green, ultraviolet-yellow, and ultraviolet- purple. Hummingbirds are highly sensitive to stimuli in their visual fields, responding to even minimal motion in any direction by reorienting themselves in midflight. Their visual sensitivity allows them to precisely hover in place while in complex and dynamic natural environments, functions enabled by the lentiform nucleus which is tuned to fast-pattern velocities, enabling highly tuned control and collision avoidance during forward flight.
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All of the copper pieces came to Lake Jackson by way of the Etowah site which shows that the two sites had a long-running relationship, trading their specific local prestige products to each other. The Etowahans prized the whelk shells from the Gulf Coast for the making of shell gorgets and ritual drinking cups and the Lake Jackson elites valued the prestigious Etowah plates and other copper objects. This monopoly on the shell trade by the Etowahans lasted until the fall of the chiefdom in about 1375, after which the elite status goods used in burials in Mound 3 come from other locations, mostly the northern Georgia and eastern Tennessee area.
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Celtic jewellery such as torcs were worn by early Welsh princes, and ancient gold artefacts found in Wales include the Mold Cape and the Banc Ty'nddôl sun-disc, found at the Cwmystwyth Mines in 2002. It is not possible to confirm that these use Welsh gold since there were strong trade links between Wales and Ireland at the time and Ireland was the major area of gold working in the Bronze Age British Isles. Irish gold is especially well known from the Irish Bronze Age as jewellery, in the form of gold lunulae, torcs, gorgets, rings, and bracelets. It was presumably collected by panning from alluvial placers in river beds or near old rivers.
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Men had to fear these beings, according to Native American mythology, but they could also gain great power from them in certain circumstances. Mississippian art also features the cedar tree or striped-center-pole motifs, which archaeologists have interpreted as the axis mundi, the point at which the three parts of the Mississippian spiritual universe come together: the Upper World, the Under World, and the Middle World where humans dwell. The cedar tree or the striped-center-pole is often found on engraved conch shell gorgets, with human or animal figures positioned on either side. The concept of an axis mundi — the point where different cosmic domains converge — is found in many cultures around the world.
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Atlatl weights and carved stone gorgets from Poverty Point The Archaic period in the Americas saw a changing environment featuring a warmer, more arid climate and the disappearance of the last megafauna. The majority of population groups at this time were still highly mobile hunter-gatherers, but now individual groups started to focus on resources available to them locally. Thus with the passage of time there is a pattern of increasing regional generalization like the Southwest, Arctic, Poverty, Dalton, and Plano traditions. These regional adaptations would become the norm, with reliance less on hunting and gathering, and a more mixed economy of small game, fish, seasonally wild vegetables, and harvested plant foods.
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A stone box grave is a coffin of stone slabs arranged in the rectangular shape into which a deceased individual was then placed. Common materials used for construction of the graves were limestone and shale, both varieties of stone which naturally break into slab like shapes. The materials for the bottom of the graves often varies, with grave floors made of stone, pottery, shell, dirt, perishables, or some combination of those materials, while the tops are more slabs of stone. Grave goods were often interred with the deceased and included mortuary pottery, ceramic objects, stone implements such as celts, axes, and arrowheads, figurines, bone beads, dice, and awls, and personal ornaments including marine shell gorgets and freshwater pearls.
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Nickel silver comb by Bruce Caesar (Pawnee-Sac and Fox, 1984) Oklahoma History Center Plains Indians are most well known for their beadwork. Beads on the Great Plains date back to at least to 8800 BCE, when a circular, incised lignite bead was left at the Lindenmeier Site in Colorado.Dubin 239 Shells such as marginella and olivella shells were traded from the Gulf of Mexico and the coasts of California into the Plains since 100 CE. Mussel shell gorgets, dentalia, and abalone were prized trade items for jewelry.Dubin 241 Bones provided material for beads as well, especially long, cylindrical beads called hair pipes, which were extremely popular from 1880 to 1910 and are still are very common in powwow regalia today.
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The result of the election had to be notified to the military chain of command and confirmed by "His Majesty". Only in the rarest cases, was this rejected, as in the case of Standschützen officer who had been convicted and demoted years before to six months imprisonment. The officers of the Standschützen had the same ranks as the regular army and a Standschützen command was the equivalent of a command in the army, even if it was commanded by an officer of lower rank. The officers of the Standschützen wore as rank badges the star rosettes of military officers in goldwork on grass-green gorgets in the same pattern as that of the other members of their arm of service.
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Faunal remains show that the location had been used for feasting activities through much of its history, even before the construction of the mound. Large amounts of avian remains, many the only examples of particular species found in all of Cahokia, show that the site was connected to avian imagery. Many examples of bird wing bones and other body parts found at the site are considered to have been used for decorative purposes instead of food. Raptor imagery in the form of falcon dancers, the Forked Eye Surround Motif and the "Birdman" is integrally associated with warrior imagery, a major theme of the S.E.C.C. Engraved shell gorgets and cups with similar imagery were discovered in the "Great Mortuary" at Spiro in the early 1930s.
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Exotic trade items from the Mississippian regions have been found in excavated Fort Ancient and Monongahela villages. These items include shell gorgets from Eastern Tennessee, a head pot similar to those produced in the Central Mississippi Valley by the peoples of the Middle Mississippian Parkin and Nodena Phases, and pottery with motifs and decoration methods connected with Angel Phase sites in the Lower Ohio Valley. Such items made their way into this region through long established native trade routes. European items were deposited into the archaeological record at sites such as Lower Shawneetown and Hardin Village in nearby Greenup County, Kentucky and the Buffalo, Rolf Lee and Clover Sites in Putnam, Mason and Cabell Countys in West Virginia, which have all produced European metal objects dated after 1550.
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Using these valued materials, Mississippian artists created exquisite works of art reflecting their cultural identity and their complex spiritual beliefs. When commercial excavators dug into Craig Mound in the 1930s, they found many beautifully crafted ritual artifacts, including stone effigy pipes, polished stone maces, finely made flint knives and arrowpoints, polished chunkey stones, copper effigy axes, Mississippian copper plates (Spiro plates), mica effigy cut outs, elaborately engraved conch shell ornaments, pearl bead necklaces, stone earspools, wood carvings inlaid with shell, and specially made mortuary pottery. The conch shells were fashioned into gorgets and drinking cups engraved with intricate designs representing costumed men, real and mythical animals, and geometric motifs, all of which had profound symbolic significance. Spiro Mounds' ceremonial objects are among the finest examples of pre-Columbian art in North America.
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The Adena culture built conical mounds in which single- or multiple-event burials, often cremated, were interred along with rich grave goods including copper bracelets, beads, and gorgets, art objects made from mica, novaculite, hematite, banded slate, and other kinds of stone, shell beads and cups, and leaf-shaped "cache blades". This culture is believed to have been core to the Meadowood Interaction Sphere, in which cultures in the Great Lakes region, the St. Lawrence region, the Far Northeast, and the Atlantic region interacted. The large area of interaction is indicated by the presence of Adena-style mounds, the presence of exotic goods from other parts of the interaction spheres, and the participation in the "Early Woodland Burial Complex" defined by William Ritchie Ritchie, W. A. (1955). "Recent Discoveries Suggesting an Early Woodland Burial Cult in the Northeast".
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Interred with the dead were exotic grave goods, including copper and silver pan pipes, marine shell gorgets, and exotic cherts. The exotic goods among the burials may provide evidence for inherited status differentiation among Point Peninsula groups. Pan pipes, which have been found in burial mounds from Florida to Minnesota, considered to be a diagnostic trait within the Hopewell inventory, appear suddenly in North America around 200 BCE, then disappear as do certain other Hopewell traits, around 400 CE. Found mostly in the United States, nine pan pipes curiously appear in the LeVesconte mound, a Point Peninsula site located in Campbellford, Ontario. Though the Hopewell interaction sphere generally is confined to the United States, much of the silver found in mound artifacts, such as pan pipes, actually comes from Cobalt, Ontario, far up the Ottawa River.
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Other sites with significant Clover Phase habitations include the Lower Shawneetown Site, the Buffalo Site, the Hardin Village Site, the Madisonville Site, the Rolfe Lee Site, Logan Site and Marmet Village Site. Pottery excavated from many of these different sites, with types including Madisonville Plain, Cordmarked, or Smoothed Cordmarked wares, have a unique feature(a 2-twist direction to the cordage) which is rarely found in pottery from sites to the west of the Clover Site and are relatively common at sites to its east. This suggest that Clover site people maintained closer contact with sites such as Buffalo, Gue Farm, Marmet, and Rolfe Lee than with other sites that were to its west. Other exotic artifacts found at the site, such as shell gorgets associated with the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, pottery effigy bowls, and figurines show a connection with Mississippian culture villages in what is now eastern Tennessee.
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Power (2004), Early Art of the Southeastern Indians : 103 After the collapse of the Etowah polity in approximately 1375 trade continued for the Lake Jackson peoples, albeit now with peoples located in the northern Georgia and eastern Tennessee area. No longer able to get the elaborate copper plates from Etowah, a local style developed, producing a new style of such as that depicted on the "Elder Birdman" plate, thought to represent the merger of the Birdman corpus with a local solar deity. Further east and south into Florida were non-Mississippian culture peoples who were involved in long-distance trade of local high status items such as busycon shells for gorgets and yaupon holly for the black drink. The Mill Cove Complex is a St. Johns culture site in Duval County, Florida with two sand burial mounds, one platform mound shaped and associated village habitation areas.
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Also found during the excavations were distinctive Madisonville horizon pottery,Michelle M. Davidson, "Preliminary mineralogical and chemical study of Pre-Madisonville and Madisonville horizon Fort Ancient ceramics," Norse Scientist, Vol. 1, Issue 1, April 2003; Northern Kentucky University. including cordmarked, plain and grooved-paddle jars, as well as a variety of chert points, scrapers and ceremonial pipes. The site was inhabited continuously from 1400 to about 1650 CE and probably had a population of 250 to 500 people living in long, rectangular houses covered with bark and shared by multiple families, as indicated by the several central hearths and interior partitions.A. Gwynn Henderson, David Pollack, "A Native History of Kentucky: Selections from Chapter 17: Kentucky," in Native America: A State-by-State Historical Encyclopedia, edited by Daniel S. Murphree, Volume 1, pages 393-440; Greenwood Press, Santa Barbara, CA. 2012 Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the community engaged in trade with other villages, as evidenced by the presence in graves of ornamental shell gorgets made from the shells of marine mollusks harvested off the coasts of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.
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A brief excavation carried out by the Knoxville Chapter of the Tennessee Archaeological Society uncovered several Woodland, Mississippian, and Cherokee artifacts, including shell gorgets and knife blades. The chapter also reported a Cherokee burial accompanied by a musket, knife, steatite pipe, and glass beads."Settico Site on the Little Tennessee River." Tennessee Archaeologist 16, no. 2 (Autumn of 1960), 93–95. In anticipation of the flooding of the site by Tellico Lake, University of Tennessee researchers conducted excavations at Citico in the late 1960s and late 1970s. Excavators uncovered the posthole patterns of 11 domestic structures, 55 burials, 119 features, and over 30,000 ceramics. The structures included two rectangular summer house/circular winter house pairings characteristic of Overhill Cherokee dwellings, a small circular structure, a square structure, and five rectangular structures. One of the rectangular structures was associated with the site's Mississippian occupation, while the other 10 structures dated to the Cherokee period.Gerald Schroedl (ed.), Overhill Cherokee Archaeology at Chota-Tanasee (University of Tennessee Department of Anthropology, Report of Investigations 38, 1986), 539, 544.
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