There are 650 species of river snails in North America which makes this continent the richest in the world for these tiny animals.  Many of these are shell dwelling soft bodied gastropods that live in the streams and rivers of the southeastern region of our country. Within this group is a genus called Leptoxis (or more commonly known as Anculosa)  which are gill breathing and operculum bearing snails that usually live in the bottom of reasonably fast flowing streams in the middle South to southern Midwest.  Of the thirty three known members of the Leptoxis genus, many are now threatened with extinction because of river impoundment and siltation and industrial/agricultural pollutions.  But during the prehistoric times in the region, the natives consumed the little mollusk Anculosa because it was available in enormous numbers and became what was for dinner. 

Most of us contemporary people would not wish to gather river snails for food but beginning perhaps as far back as the Paleo Period (10,000 BC) the American natives did just that.  Possibly during the Archaic Period and most likely during the Woodland Period (1000 BC to AD 1000) most definitely during the Mississippian Period (AD 1000 to  1700) these people did harvest and eat the various river snails found in the waterways in the southeast.  As the natives became more agrarian and began living in small permanent villages near the rivers and large streams, they were adjacent to the watery homes of the apparently easy to catch snails.  Probably during that time of clean natural water sources there were many millions of these mollusks for the taking and the natives did take them.  We know that because there have been huge mounds of discarded mollusk shells found near rivers from Kentucky to Alabama and Virginia to Georgia.  They would most likely have placed the snails in steatite or ceramic pots of boiling water and waited for the heat to force the little cooked animals from their shells so they could be eaten.  The empty shells would have then been discarded or used for ornaments. 

The freshwater Anculosa snails produce the calcium carbonate body coverings by excreting consumed calcium and other minerals and which harden into the protective shells.  The outside of the shells are coated with a horny epidermal called periostracum which give the shells various colors from to tans and browns to gold and blue.  These hues are most likely evolutionary means for the snails to camouflage themselves from predators such as fish, turtles, water birds and humans.

There have been some large caches of Anculosa shells, which look like miniature conch or whelk shells, found in the southeast and that were purposely altered to make beads.  An edge of the shell whorl would have been rubbed against an abrasive substance such as sandstone or granite until a hole was made.  Or a hole was bored using a rotating chipped stone drill.  A sinew string or thong could then have been passed through the manufactured hole and out through the natural shell opening through which the animal moved and ate.  The beads, which are normally less than an inch long from the base of the whorls to the top of the spire, could have been strung into necklaces and bracelets, hung from the earlobes or sewn onto garments by using these holes.  Archaeological investigations have uncovered ancient burials that had thousands of these shell beads placed with the deceased.  One grouping found in Tennessee had an estimated one hundred thousand of the Anculosa shell beads.  Calcium carbonate is a hard substance that any of you who have picked up a marine shell on a beach can attest.  It must have taken almost countless hours for the bead makers to rub and/or drill holes in a hundred thousand beads.  And that is just one of the many riverside groupings that has been found during the last hundred or so years.  These little beads, which can still be found today as bleached and patinated white/grey shells, must have had some important meanings to the natives and we shall probably never know what those meanings were.  But we do know that they extracted a source of food from the little mollusk.  The little gastropods houses certainly had ornamental shell usage, but the Anculosa snails themselves would have been what was for dinner.

REFERENCES:

Burch, J. T.                                                     1989

            NORTH AMERICAN FRESHWTER SNAILS

Dillon, Robert T.                                            2000

            THE ECOLOGY OF THE FRESHWATER MOLLUSCS

Emerson, Thomas J.                                       2009

            ARCHAIC SOCIETIES: DIVERSITY AND COMPLEXITY ACROSS THE

            MIDCONTINENT

Goodrich, Calvin                                             1922

            THE ANCULOSAE OF THE ALABAMA RIVER DRAINAGE

Lewis, T. M. N. & Madeline Kneberg           1959

            “The Archaic Culture in the Middle South”, AMERICAN ANTIQUITY,

            Vol. 25, No. 2

Parmalee, Paul W.                                           1906

            “Remains form the Aztalan Site”, WISCONSIN ARCHAELOGICAL SOCIETY

Webb, William S.                                            1974

            INDIAN KNOLL

Wood, W. Raymond                                       1974

            JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH, Vol. 30, No. 1

Copyright © 2013, Jim Maus. All rights reserv

The prehistoric natives, in this region, apparently began making ceramic vessels for eating, food storage and cooking sometime within the last two thousand or so years.  Most of the shards encountered as well as most of the very few intact vessels found will date within the last one thousand years.  The one element needed by all these ancient people, for life giving sustenance, was water.  Therefore, most of the settlements built by the prehistoric natives were developed near water sources – many near Piedmont rivers.  The water was, of course, needed for drinking and bathing and cooking as well as for mixing with the stream side clays to make ceramic pottery.  Much of this pottery was in the form of simple conical shaped bowls and jars with sizes ranging from a few inches across and high to large corn storage urns topping three feet tall.  The insides of these vessels were normally rubbed smooth with river rocks while the exterior walls were well polished, were brushed with vegetation, or were impressed with woven nets or carved wooden paddles.  The bases were either flattened or in a somewhat acute conical shape.  The rims were in straight alignment with the vessel sides or incurved or outwardly arched and the sides were normally topped with a simple smooth edge.  These pots were plainly utilitarian for the most part but some few had unusual elements added such as animal effigies, color added to the ceramics or altered rims.  Most of the altered rim borders fit into the class that is called “piecrust rim” where the rim edge was thickened and then tally marked or punctated with a fingernail or a small chipped knife so as to resemble a modern pie crust.  One, though, is in a class completely by itself – this saw tooth rim.

Many years ago, a local teenager along with his uncle, found an intact ceramic bowl adjacent to the Dan River in Stokes County, NC.  This was near an old village site that today is called Early Upper Sauratown Site and that dates to an occupation by the natives of about AD 1400-1500.  This is a rare vessel simply because it is solid or intact.  As mentioned before, this writer has found and viewed many thousands of pottery shards from the region but the number of unbroken vessels ever known of or seen would probably be fewer than one hundred.  This particular bowl is 5 ¾” high by 7 1/16” in diameter at the everted rim and has a slightly rounded conical base.  The exterior is characteristically mottled dark grey/brown and tan with lots of sparkly crushed quartz tempering medium showing on the surface.  The interior, as is typical, is burnished smooth and the outside face is stamped with what is known as the Dan River Net Impressed pottery technique.  Several places on the exterior clearly show impressions of the weaving knots in the ancient net that was used to press this motif into the green or unfired clay.  What a beautiful and symmetrical vessel.  And now comes the kicker for this already unique urn!  Encircling the entire rim edge are fourteen raised ceramic teeth or barbs that appear to be similarly shaped to the teeth on a modern saw blade.  But five to six hundred years ago, there were no saw blades to be seen by these Indians since the Europeans (with their metal saws) had not yet appeared in the Piedmont.  What was the ancient ceramist attempting to show with this unique bowl rim?  What was the inspiration for this phenomenon?  Maybe the edge of a plant leaf could have inspired the potter to create this unusual look to the bowl rim.  Or maybe the spines of a porcupine.  Or the ruffled feathers of a bird.  And of course, it is possible that some village member found a more ancient serrated spear point while digging in the cornfield and it influenced the potter’s actions. It could have been one of many items that stimulated the bowl’s manufacture but it certainly appears to be a saw blade edge.  A very perplexing vessel border.  Of the maybe one hundred solid Piedmont vessels in existence, this is perhaps the only one with this type rim.  It is certainly the only one ever heard of or seen by this writer.  This rare and wonderful saw tooth rim bowl.

REFERENCES:

Coe, Joffre L. & Ernest Lewis                                                            1952

            “Prehistoric Pottery of the Eastern united States”, ARCHAEOLOGY OF

            EASTERN NORTH AMERICA

Coe, Joffre L.                                                                                      1964

            “The Formative Cultures of the Carolina Piedmont”, TRANSACTIONS OF THE

            AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

Hudson, Charles M.                                                                           1976

            THE SOUTHEASTERN INDIANS

Mathis, Mark A. & Jeffery J. Crow                                                  1983

            THE PREHISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA

Rights, Douglas L.                                                                              1947

            THE AMERICAN INDIAN IN NORTH CAROLINA

South, Stanley A.                                                                                1980

            INDIANS IN NORTH CAROLINA

Ward, H. Trawick & R. P. Stephen Davis, Jr.                                    1993

            INDIAN COMMUNITIES OF THE NORTH CAROLINA PIEDMONT  – 

            AD 1000-1700

Ward, H. Trawick & R. P. Stephen Davis, Jr.                                    1999

            THE TIME BEFORE HISTORY:  THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF NORTH

            CAROLINA

Wetmore, Ruth Y.                                                                               1975

            FIRST ON THE LAND: THE NORTH CAROLINA INDIANS

In modern Stokes County, NC, near where Town Fork Creek flows into the Dan River, prehistoric aboriginals began residing around AD 1300-1400.  They appear to have moved onto and away from the village site numerous times until another group settled on part of the land in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century.  These later inhabitants seem to have come from Southwestern Virginia and were possibly of the South Appalachian Mississippian group who we now call the Dallas Culture.  These Amerinds lived in this NC village, which is named Upper Sauratown, from around AD 1600 to about AD 1700 at which time they packed up and moved further south, ostensibly to escape the ever increasing hoards of Europeans moving into their territorial lands.   They were apparently a highly religious sect who made many artistic creations used in their daily prescribed devotions to their immortal beings.  Based on the quantity of pipes recovered from this site, they made and regularly used smoking implements in the faithful worship of their deities.  Most of these Indian-made pipes were of sand or crush quartz tempered ceramics or locally mined steatite and were of the simple elbow type with plain round stems and bowls.  But some were more complex in zoomorphic/anthropomorphic shapes or more unusual elbow profiles such as the pipe pictured with this article.   It technically would be called an obtuse angle elbow pipe which is the most common form of late prehistoric to early historic clay pipes that were made in the Piedmont.  But it is also very uncommon in that there is a raised collar or flange at the juncture of the stem and the bowl and the stem, itself, is in a square shape rather than the normal round profile.  These two oddities, combined in one smoking contrivance, should be considered extremely unique in late Prehistoric to early Historic Period pipes in the region.  This artifact is 3 ¼ inches long while the bowl is slightly less than one inch in diameter and it is made of well-burnished tan ceramics that is tempered with very finely crushed quartz.  It was found in the 1960’s at the Upper Sauratown site which is near the old Major Winston plantation adjacent to the Dan River.   The Reverend Douglas Rights, in his 1947 book, THE AMERICAN INDIAN IN NORTH CAROLINA, pictured a small ceramic pipe (one of his reputed 45,000 artifacts), with a collar near the bowl opening – but not at the stem and bowl intersection.  It was found at the Steelman Plantation site in Yadkin County, NC and Rights documented this pipe as T-6 in his artifacts register but neither the book photo nor his drawing in the records log show it having a square stem which makes it different from the Sauratown pipe.  Based on the place where found and the early documentation number, Reverend Rights possibly found the pipe shortly after the Great Flood of 1916 while he was home on leave from the US Army during World War I.  Also, any artifact from the Steelman site would probably have been made and used many hundreds of years before the Dan River village came into existence, so it could be safely ascertained that this earlier collared/flanged example probably did not act as the model for the later Sauratown pipe.  From where the pipe artisan came up with his inspiration for the Saura Indian square stem pipe, most likely, will always remain a mystery.

This is a beautiful, and maybe one-of-a-kind, ceramic pipe produced during the early Historic Period in north-central North Carolina.  As the evil and unstoppable viruses, brought in by the Europeans, began to wreak havoc on the lives of the natives in the region some three to four hundred years ago, these Saura Indians were forced to flee the death and destruction that they could not control or probably even comprehend.  They moved on, as a much disease reduced population of living Indians, and they never again reached the zenith of liturgical art as was seen while they lived at Upper Sauratown.  But they did make, while dwelling at the Dan River village complex, many beautiful ceremonial art objects, among which would certainly be this simple but exceptionally rare square stem collared pipe.

REFERENCES:

Bierer, Bert W.                                                          1977

     INDIANS AND ARTIFACTS I N THE SOUTHEAST

Fundaburk, Emma L. & Mary D. Foreman             1957

     SUN CIRCLES AND HUMAN HANDS

Gallaway, Alan                                                                     2002

     THE INDIAN SLAVE TRADE: THE RISE OF THE ENGLISH EMPIRE IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH

     1670-1717

Griffin, James B., Editor                                          1952

     ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE EASTERN UNITED STATES

Hothem, Lar                                                              1999

     COLLECTOR’S GUIDE TO INDIAN PIPES

Hudson, Charles        1976

     THE SOUTHEASTERN INDIANS

Litton, Ralph                                                             1924

     USE OF TOBACCO AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

Maus, James E.                                                         2010

     “The Saura Indians of Rockingham & Stokes Counties, NC”, JIMMAUSARTIFACTS.COM

Rights, Douglas L.                                                    1947

     THE AMERICAN INDIAN IN NORTH CAROLINA

Ward, H. Trawick & R. P. Stephen Davis, Jr.                     1993

     INDIAN COMMUNITIES OF NORTH CAROLINA PIEDMONT:  AD 1000-1700

Ward, H. Trawick & R. P. Stephen Davis, Jr.                     1999

     TIME BEFORE HISTORY:  THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF NORTH CAROLINA

West, George                                                                        1934

     TOBACCO PIPES AND SMOKING CULTURE OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN

The prehistoric natives started making stone ungrooved axes or celts during the Late Archaic Period or at least 4,000 years ago.  Various types of stone that could be utilized for these tools were and still are found in the Piedmont and would have been available to these people for making cutting tools such as celts.  Copper, though, is not found in the Piedmont.  So just from where was this material derived and how did it get to north-central NC?

Copper is found in many parts of the world and has been used by people for thousands of years for tools and weapons.  During the times of the Roman Empire, much copper was mined on the island of Cyprus and the metal was given the name cyprium or “metal of Cyprus”.  This was later changed to cuprum and later Anglicized to the name we now use – copper.  Pure copper is reasonably soft (being about 4 on the Mohs hardness scale) and malleable and has a color of red/orange.  Along with gold (yellow color) and osmium (blue color), copper is only one of three elemental metals with a color other than silver or gray.  In the United States, large deposits of raw copper were anciently found in the current state of Michigan and the prehistoric natives did make use of this metal, as early as 5,000 BC,  for tools including knives, spears and ungrooved axes.  During the last ice age, the glaciers scoured the land in the upper Midwest and exposed much raw or float copper for the Amerinds to use.  They traded this copper throughout the eastern half of our country both as raw nuggets and sheets as well as in finished products.  We know this because artifacts made of copper from that region have been found as far south as current Georgia, Alabama and Texas and as far northeast as Wisconsin Pennsylvania and New York.   Copper is also found in the Appalachian Mountains and a deposit called Ore Knob Mine was discovered in the nineteenth century in North Carolina. It produced over thirty tons of copper sulfide called chalcopyrite (which is yellow-red and iridescent) between in 1855 and 1962, when the mine was closed.

In the early 1960’s an amateur archaeologist found the copper celt pictured with this article.  He did not exactly know what he had found because it certainly does not appear to be an ancient Indian artifact.  The tool is somewhat crude and small and is not stone. And metallic implements like this one are usually not found in this region.  At least one other copper celt, though, has been found in the Tar Heel state and it was discovered at the Town Creek Indian Mound in Montgomery County.  According to studies done by archaeologists on copper artifacts found in the upper Midwest, there are two types of copper from which tools were made.  One type was thin natural sheet copper and ancient artisans folded it and the folds pounded with a stone hammer until they were welded to one another.  This process would have been continued until the desired size was obtained.  The piece then would have been abraded by using sandstone or similar abrasive material until the final shape and sharpness was determined.  The other process for making tools was to take a chunk of raw copper and begin pounding it in order to reach the desired size and shape for a tool.  The problem with both these techniques was that this hammering would make the raw copper more and more brittle and thus it would eventually break or shatter.  The ancient natives solved this problem by periodically heating the tool to a red hot state which enabled them to continue hammering without destroying the copper.   When the artisan brought the projected tool to the size he wanted, the final abrading and sharpening, same as with the sheet copper tools, would have been done.  This copper celt is 4 ¼ inches long by 2 ¼ inches wide at the upper or poll end by exactly one inch thick again at the poll.  It is of an unusual shape in that normal stone celts have poll that is much smaller than the bit.  This tool is in reverse of that with the poll end being the largest area, so maybe it was made as a wood splitting maul to be pounded by a hammer stone into a log rather than being used as an axe.  Since we will never know for sure as to its ancient usage, it will continue to be called a celt.  The cutting end or bit has been sharpened and the entire celt was anciently well polished and still retains some polish and iridescence.  The question now is from where the copper was acquired – Michigan or North Carolina?  The answer to this query might be as easy as looking at a map.   The Ore Knob Mine is in mountainous Ashe County, NC near the town of Jefferson and is only a short distance due south of the town of Saltville, Virginia and would have been easy for the ancient Saltville natives to travel there and acquire copper material.  It is theorized that the Indians in Saltville fled the region after a disastrous clash with Spanish in AD 1567 and slowly moved East to current Stokes County, NC and eventually to the village of Sauratown.  If this is true, did one of the native warriors bring with him the copper celt made from metal obtained at Ore Knob?  This ancient relocation theory along with the natural iridescence on this celt, points to an acquisition of the copper at a Southeastern mountain location.  There are tests that can be made on the copper to actually determine if it came from Michigan or Carolina but this writer, at this point in time, is of the belief that it was obtained in the region that would become North Carolina, and has no interest in in scientific testing.  Of course that could change in the future and I may decide to have the tool evaluated for exact origin of the metal.  But as of now, in my mind it is a tool that was made several hundred years ago from native Carolina metal and has become a  very rare  Sauratown Copper Celt.

REFERENCES:

 Arnett, Ethel S.                                              1975

            THE SAURA AND KEYAUEE IN THE LAND THAT BECAME GUILFORD, RANDOLPH AND

            ROCKINGHAM

 Coe, Joffre L.                                                  1995

            TOWN CREEK INDIAN MOUND: A NATIVE AMERICAN LEGACY

 Goodman, Clair B.                                        1984

            COPPER ARTIFACTS IN LATE EASTERN WOODLAND PREHISTORY

 Hudson, Charles                                          1976

            THE SOUTHEASTERN INDIANS

 Maus, James E.                                             2010

            “Three Saltville Style Gorgets and a Crystal”, JIMMAUSARTIFACTS.COM

 Rights, Douglas L.                                        1947

            THE AMERICAN INDIANS IN NORTH CAROLINA

 Ward, H. Trawick & R. P. Stephen Davis   1997

            TIME BEFORE HISTORY

 We do not know exactly where the name Saura (also spelled Sara, Saro and Sarwa) came from but a guess is that these are the same Indians encountered by Hernando de Soto in AD 1540 and who he called Suala or Suale.  These natives supposedly began living in two large villages and several smaller ones along the river about AD 1450, according to archaeological data.  The two large villages are today called Upper Sauratown in Stokes County, near the confluence of Town Fork Creek and the Dan River and about 30 miles southeast in Rockingham County is Lower Sauratown located a short distance down river from the entrance of the Smith River into the Dan and they were both utilized by the natives until around AD 1700.  The Dan River itself was reportedly named for a Saura Indian leader called Danapha or Danaho.  If these Indians did occupy the area as early as 1450, they were possibly related to an earlier prehistoric culture called Dan River Phase.  But at least some of these natives most likely migrated from Southwestern Virginia some time after the Spanish intrusion into that region in 1567.  There have been almost identical pottery vessels and shell gorgets found in the Virginia and North Carolina locations linking the two groups. Both the Upper and Lower Sauratown sites are archaeologically divided into three time periods or sub-phases.  The Early Sauratown group inhabited the sites from about AD 1450 to 1620.  The Middle group lived there from AD 1620 to 1670 and the Late Sauratown villagers occupied the land from AD 1670 to about 1700.  These divisions are based on distinct pottery types, settlement patterns, ceremonialism and European trade goods.

 The Indians who lived in these towns mostly built small dome shaped houses using bent saplings that were tried together at the top of the dwelling and were covered with skins, bark or wattle and daub.  They built fortified stockades around their village homes possibly because there was intensive warfare to gain the best agricultural land and for defense from raiding parties of Indians from the northern regions.  As time progressed from AD 1450 to 1700, the native life in these communities changed.  During the Early and Middle periods, the villages and the populations were becoming larger and more complex but during the Late Sauratown times, the number of villagers became fewer and with much larger cemeteries.  Throughout the entire 250 year period of occupation in the two Sauratowns, the natives used the bow and arrow for warfare and hunting and little changed in that respect.  They made short bows, about three to four feet long, from locust wood and arrows using river cane.  The arrows were tipped with small triangular shaped points made of rhyolite, quartz or silicified slate. They grew corn and squash and beans all through entire period with the only change probably being as the population increased or decreased demanding more or less of these crops.  But there were changes in ceremonialism and religion and changes in pottery.  Throughout this total time period the Indians made simple utilitarian pottery some of which was corn cob impressed, net impressed or brushed on the exterior surfaces.  Beginning during the Middle and extending into Late Sauratown phases, the pottery had changed to mostly smooth burnished surfaces with everted and elaborate rims and there was effigy pottery being made which almost certainly had ceremonial purposes.  These smooth surfaced ceramic vessels are called Oldtown pottery and are fine sand tempered with thin walls and large sizes for cooking or food storage.  The Indians there would have had a definite religious life based on a central and all mighty god as well as minor deities and they would have glorified these supernatural beings with objects used in various ceremonies.  These items would have included shell and stone pendants, gorgets and beads, ceremonial axes and celts, stone spautlates, smoking pipes and effigy pottery.  And they must have had a pretty good life even considering the Indians of the other regional villages probably wanted them gone or dead so as to acquire their corn fields.  But all that changed during the seventeenth century when the Europeans began arriving in north-central North Carolina and brought with them alien microbes and epidemics of diseases to which the natives had no resistance.  Based on recovered archaeological evidence, there was extensive bartering between the Europeans and the Saura of these villages in the AD 1630 to 1700 time period.  They brought glass and copper beads; iron axes, knives and hoes; brass kettles; pewter and kaolin pipes; woven cloth and guns to trade with the natives for deer skins, furs and, most importantly, land.  Both Sauratown village sites have been archaeologically explored beginning at Lower Sauratown by the Reverend Douglas Rights sometime before 1936 and by UNC in 1938.  Upper Sauratown, though, has received the most efforts in explorations.  During the 1960’s through the 1980’s both professional and amateur archaeological sleuths spent countless hours searching this site for ancient artifacts and scientific information.  The site has yielded many shell gorgets, effigy and utilitarian pots, stone celts and multitudes of arrowheads. Also found have been tens of thousands of glass trade beads of the AD 1600-1700 time period which attests to the large amount of bartering between the Indians and the colonists.  But along with the exchange goods these Euro-American traders also brought death.  During the Late Sauratown time period, the village sites became largely burial grounds for the natives killed by smallpox, measles and even the common cold.  In an attempt to escape these rapidly spreading pathogens, the Saura abandoned their homes along the Dan River around 1700 and moved south to join the Keyauwee Indians near the Pee Dee River and hopefully have peace and tranquility.  But alas, as we know today, that did not happen.  These sovereign and noble Indians were going to essentially perish as a stronger and more greedy people overtook them and their lands.

 And thus here is the short and simplified version of these Saura Indians and their towns.  They existed for about 250 years in at least some peace and prosperity.  But what of us today?  We of the European extraction have been in this land for 250 or more years.  What will happen to us?  Will tyrannical and religious militants overtake our lives and our lands?  Or will we continue to live in peace and harmony and avoid the ultimate fate of the Saura Indians of Rockingham and Stokes Counties, NC.

REFERENCES:

Arnett, Ethel S.                                                                       1975

            THE SAURA AND KEYAUEE IN THE LAND THAT BECAME GUILFORD,

            RANDOLPH AND ROCKINGHAM

Cumming, William P                                                               1958

            THE DISCOVERIES OF JOHN LEDERER

Gallay, Alan                                                                            2002

            THE INDIAN SLAVE TRADE: THE RISE OF THE ENGLISH EMPIRE IN

            AMERICAN SOUTH 1670-1717

Glanville, Jim, Phd                                                                  2008

            “Lizard Effigy Vessels from Virginia and North Carolina”, CENTRAL STATES

            ARCHAEOLIGICAL JOURNAL, Vol. 55, No. 2

Mathis, Mark A & Jeffery J. Crow                                       1983

            THE PREHISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA

Maus, Jim                                                                   2010

            “Three Saltville Style Gorgets and a Crystal”,  JimMausArtifacts.com

Rights, Douglas L.                                                                  1947

            THE AMERICAN INDIAN IN NORTH CAROLINA

Smyth, John F. D.                                                                  1784

            A TOUR OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Ward, H. Trawick & R. P Stephen Davis, Jr.                         1993

            INDIAN COMMUNITIES OF THE NORTH CAROLINA PIEDMONT: AD

            1000-1700

Bottles were used by the prehistoric Americans presumably for the supposed purpose of holding water, which is one of the necessities of life.  Most ancient bottles are simple globular vessels with a constricted top and a pouring spout.  As the development of ceramic pottery was advancing, most likely someone realized that water would evaporate less quickly in a more enclosed vessel.  And if the vessel had a long and narrow neck, probably derived from its stylistic model, the dipper gourd, the liquid became easier to pour plus the time it remained in the fluid state was increased.  The earliest bottles probably had the small orifice and the long narrow neck but after a couple hundred years, the vessel opening became much larger and the neck much shorter.  There is no successful answer as to why this change was made except to guess that with the increase in population, which necessitated more bottles, the potters just began forming simpler and quicker to make vessels.  Shortcuts are a unique trait of humanity so this theory is very plausible.  Most of the bottles being made during this AD 1000 to AD 1700 time frame, regardless of the neck size and shape, were simple globular ceramic vessels without any embellishments.  Simple shapes would have been the most efficient to manufacture and to use for the storage of water.  They had flat to slightly rounded bases that would usually sit upright on the ground so the liquid within would not spill out. But not all bottles were so simple and uncomplicated in appearance.

Throughout the prehistoric period of pottery making in this country, some of the artisans certainly made elaborate creations and this was most likely for some unknown ceremonial/religious/economic purposes.  Some of the vessels were coated with red or red and white slip, some were incised and engraved in almost countless patterns and others had extraneous features applied to the outer surfaces.  These outside features included human and animal characteristics, plant replications, perceived god-like shapes, simple bumps and nodes and applied legs and/or feet.  These latter features will be discussed in this paper.

Most prehistoric, protohistoric, and even post-European contact era bottles, that included legs or feet, had only three which is called a tripod.  There is one distinct reason for a vessel to only have three versus four lower appendages and that is because, regardless of the irregular terrain, the bottles would sit evenly and more level and would be less likely to tip over, unless the ground was steeply inclined.  The native potters did not make many of these tripodal vessels based on the reasonably low quantity that have been recovered from period sites.  There are normally only two types of these feet or legs – one being solid flat and wide legs (often called footed stands) that may have straight edges or be in a curved or stair-step design and the other being large and round legs often with bulbous knobs on the lower end. Of these two types, most tripodal vessels seem to have the rounded legs, according to the fact that more of that type has been found.  These legs can vary from only an inch or so to several inches in height and the round type can be in the form of hollow or solid ceramics. Along with the legs on these bottles, some also have basal platforms onto which the legs are mounted and/or have horizontal supports or braces connecting all three appendages.  These rare tripod bottles have been found from the Mississippi River valley westward into contemporary Texas and Oklahoma and east as far as Alabama, Georgia and Florida.  There have been a very few broken tripod pottery sherds found in coastal Alabama that suggest some of these tripodal vessels were actually large bowls rather than bottles.  The speculations about these, though, are that they came from Historic Period pots and were Indian made ceramic replications of the footed cast iron cooking pots used by early European explorers.  Other than those few examples, most native made tripodal vessels are in the bottle form and most will date to the AD 1400-1700 time period of manufacture.  It is today believed, by many scholars, that the bodies of these tripod bottles, as with all ancient American Indian bottles, are styled after the native grown gourds but there is no reasonable understanding of the tripod legs/feet.  Bottle gourds, which are believed to have been domesticated in southern Africa before being carried through Asia and then brought to North America more than ten thousand years ago, could have been used as water containers well before the invention of ceramic vessels.  Most of the globular bodies of these ceramic tripod bottles are plain but some have collars at the base of the neck and others have various incised/engraved motifs such as Mathew incising, Walls engraving or fluting/gadrooning.  Most, also, have been found along the Mississippi River in the contemporary states of Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri and Arkansas and are shell tempered grey ceramics called Bell Plain or Neeley’s Ferry.

While all prehistoric to protohistoric vessels are unique, some are much more unusual than others.  The plain utilitarian bowls, bottles and jars were most likely produced in the tens or even hundreds of thousands for drinking, cooking and eating uses but others were made apparently for economic/religious/ceremonial reasons since the extra work involved in the making of these more uncommon motifs would not have justified the extra expense in time, unless it was for some special purposes.  Such is probably the case with the unique three legged vessels – perhaps they were used by the society priests in worship of their deities – or maybe they were used in preparations for hunting or war – or could it be that they were used only by the cultural rulers – or maybe they were made only to hold alcoholic beverages made from the Indian corn or wild bee honey (it is theorized by many scholars today that most all the ancient religious societies were heavy users of strong drink in their rituals).   Whatever were the true purposes of these vessels being made those hundreds of years in the past, today we only have to understand that the crafts persons made truly wonderful ceramic art items – the ancient tripodal bottles.

REFERENCES:

Bonds, Jack, Editor                                                    2006

            THE ART OF THE ANCIENT CADDO

Dokstader, Frederick J.                                               1972

            NAKED CLAY:  UNADORNED POTTERY OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN

Fogleson, Raymond                                                    2004

            HANDBOOK OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS: SOUTHEAST,

            SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE, VOL. 14

Fundaburk, Emma L. & Mary D. Foreman                1957

            SUN CIRCLES AND HUMAN HANDS

Galloway, Patricia, Editor                                          1989

            THE SOUTHESTERN CEREMONIAL COMPLEX: ARTIFACTS AND           

            ANALYSIS

Gardner, William M.                                                   1986

            LOST ARROWHEADS AND BROKEN POTTERY        

Griffin, James B., Editor                                            1952   

            ARCHAEOLOGY OF EASTERN UNITED STATES

Hathcock, Roy                                                                        1976

            ANCIENT INDIAN POTTERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI  RIVER VALLEY

Hathcock, Roy                                                                        1983

            THE QUAPAW AND THEIR POTTERY

Morse, Dan F. & Phyllis A. Morse                             1983

            ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI VALLEY

Reid, Kenneth C.                                                        1984

            “Fire and Ice: New Evidence for the Production and Preservation of Fiber-

            Tempered Pottery in the Mid-Latitude Lowlands”, AMERICAN ANTIQUITY,

            Vol. 49

Townsend, Robert F.                                                  2004

            HERO, HAWK, AND OPEN HAND

Williams, Mark & Victor Thompson                           1994

            “A Guide to Georgia Indian Pottery Types”, EARLY GEORGIA, Vol. 27, No 1

As the Archaic transitioned into the Woodland Period, these straight tube pipes were altered into the angled or elbow pipe design.  The straight tube pipe would have been easier to make but the style had one great drawback – the bowl end, in which lay the smoldering tobacco, must be angled upwards or the burning mass would fall out of the end of the pipe.  Whether by sheer luck or great intelligence, someone decided to put an angle in the straight tube pipe to solve this problem and the tube pipe almost disappeared.  Almost but not entirely.  Sometime during the reign of the straight pipe, another type was developed that we call the biconical tube pipe.  These more or less hourglass shaped pipes (hence biconical or two cones) came into being, probably in the late Archaic to early Woodland Period and continued to be made and used into the Historic Period, as noted by early Europeans.  Generally known as Medicine Tubes or Cloud Blowers, these pipes were apparently used as ceremonials in healing processes.  The healer would load Kinnikinnick (Algonquian word meaning “that which is mixed”) into the bowl of the tube and light it.  This blend of tobacco, sumac leaves, the inner bark of the dogwood tree and sometimes other plant materials, was believed to have curative properties and the smoke from the burning mixture was blown, by the healer, onto an ailing person for the purpose of medical relief.

In the 1940’s or 1950’s, the late Earl Norman of East Bend, NC, found one of these rare biconical tube pipes along the Yadkin River in Davidson County, NC.  He displayed it for many years in the basement museum under his hardware store as one of his favorite artifacts.  This pipe, which is seven inches long, was prehistorically damaged on one end and that end was reworked by the ancients for continued use.  It is made of a well polished high grade olive/black steatite and it is a rarity in itself but is made even more unique because of the engraving.  Engraved lines adorn two sides of the elliptical bowl on the undamaged end of the pipe with cross hatching between the lines in a probable effort to symbolize the body of a rattlesnake with the snake head projecting toward the bowl  opening. For some reason these engravings are only on the end of the pipe that was not anciently damaged.  Perhaps the snakes were incised after the ancient damage.  The pipe has two raised rings on the exterior surface where the center of the pipe originally was located and the overall workmanship on the pipe is excellent.  It was listed as the number one display item in the 1960 North Carolina Museum of Art exhibition “Tobacco and Smoking in Art” and is pictured in the accompanying catalog of the same name.  This biconical pipe must have been the proud possession of many individuals for many ancient years and held by numerous hands as noted by the wear and polish.  One must wonder just how much “healing” did it see before the last Indian held and used this pipe.

I am grateful that Earl Norman found this wonderful artifact and am also grateful that his late widow resisted the efforts by the NC government employees to have her donate all the collection to the state. If that had happened, this pipe would probably be, today, in a storage box in some warehouse, not to be seen again except by a select few.  Now it resides in my collection, and is displayed at shows so as to allow other collectors to enjoy the rarity and beauty of the Norman Biconical Tube Pipe.

REFERENCES:

Byrnes, James R.                                             

TOBACCO AND SMOKING IN ART

1960

Hart, Gordon                                                   

HART’S PREHISTORIC PIPE RACK

1978

Linton, Ralph                                                   

USE OF TOBACCO AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

1924

Maus, Jim                                                        

“A Unique Kentucky Adena Pipe”, 

CSAJ, Vol. 51 – No. 2,  April 2004

2004

West, George                                                  

TOBACCO PIPES AND SMOKING CUSTOMS OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS

1934

The artifact type that is called the Quapaw Teapot is probably the only American Indian vessel that was copied from a European prototype.  The usual shape is a plain globular jar with a spout on one side but there have been a few animal and human effigy forms found.  These jars have small rim openings in the top and some hare short applied necks around these openings.  They, of course, have the pouring spout but there is no type of handle on the vessel top or opposite the spout, which is somewhat odd since the Indians of that time period made pottery with large looped handles (today called stirrup vessels) on the top of the pots.  Many of these vessels have a small node directly opposite the spout that may have been an artistic expression of a handle.  They are shell tempered in normal fired colors of grey to black but some were also coated with red clay slip or black, red and white patterned slip prior to being fired.

Now we know something about the Quapaw people and these “teapot” jars but just how did they come about developing this pottery style.  Let us examine some facts.

Tea was first imported into Europe from the Far East (probably China) in the first quarter of the seventeenth century AD (1600-1625) but the British became the only European people who came to be major tea drinkers.  Coffee was also brought into Europe in the seventeenth century with the good guess time wise as around 1650 and many Europeans including the Spanish and French embraced the new coffee drink.  There is no factual evidence to indicate that ceramic tea/coffee pots or iron or brass kettles were developed in the Old World until, at the earliest, sometime during the first half of the seventeenth century.

The Quapaw Teapots most resemble British porcelain teapots but the English colonists did not arrive in the Quapaw homeland until well into the eighteenth century which would have been a considerable time after the manufacture of these unique native vessels was begun.  Some writers and archaeologists theorize that the attribution for the vessel style was from teapots carried by De Soto’s men and seen by the Chickasaw Indians in the present state of Mississippi in 1540 or by the Quapaw themselves a year later.  This is virtually impossible because, even if the Spaniards did meet these Indians, this date would have preceded the introduction of tea into Europe by at least sixty years.  The Spanish probably had no teapot shaped vessels from which the Indians could have drawn inspiration.  And also remember that the Spanish were basically coffee drinkers.  The French, however, arrived in the region of the Quapaw a half century after the European importation of tea but remember that the French, like the Spanish, were primarily coffee drinkers.  Even if these particular Fenchmen were tea drinkers, it is unlikely that would have carried easily broken ceramic teapots with them in such a long and arduous journey into the American wilderness.  So, just from where did the Quapaw get their inspiration for these jars?  Most probably (though we may never know for sure) from the French brass or cast iron kettles used to boil water for coffee.  With that reason in mind, for historical correctness, we should re-name these vessels “Quapaw Copies of French Coffee Kettles or in short, Quapaw Kettles.

REFERENCES:

No Author                                                       

“Early American Brass and Copper, 

THE SPINNING WHEEL’S COMPLETE BOOK OF ANTIQUES

1972

No Author                                                       

ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA

1995

No Author                                                       

HANDBOOK OF AMERICAN INDIANS  

1905

Hathcock, Roy                                                

THE QUAPAW AND THEIR POTTERY

1983

Manners, Errol                                    

THE CERAMICS SOURCE BOOK

1990

Perino, Gregory                                               

“A Red Quapaw Teapot”  ARTIFACTS, VOL 9, ISSUE NO. 2

1979

These people supposedly moved from the upper Midwest into what is now North and South Carolina sometime around AD 1650 and built villages along the stream that would take their name, the Catawba River.  There they have lived for at least 350 years despite the smallpox epidemic of 1738, the various wars in which they fought and the land grabbing colonists in the Treaty of 1763.  They have lived there and died there with their populations diminishing and then thriving and through it all they have made pottery.

Ceramic pottery has been made by the natives of the Carolina Piedmont (and probably many other areas in the eastern half of our country) for at least three thousand years.  If the Catawba moved to the region in the seventeenth century, they could have brought their pottery making tradition with them or adopted it after arrival.  We do know that they were making clay vessels in the early eighteenth century and trading them to European colonists in and around Charleston, SC.  And they are still making pottery today in the twenty-first century.

These native Americans never used a pottery wheel to spin lumps of clay into vessel forms.  Instead they rolled this natural plastic silicate into long cylindrical strips and coiled these strips vertically into the desired size and shape of the pottery needed.  But before this could happen, they needed to dig suitable material from clay sources along the streams bordering the river.  They used, and still use, three types of the substance – pipe clay which is soft and pliable, pan clay which is more solid and stiff and gritty blue clay which is a tempering agent.  After cleaning the clay of impurities, the three types were thoroughly mixed and could then be used to the coil the vessel shapes.  Upon finishing the coil building process, the artisan scraped and smoothed the pot, both inside and outside, using a mussel shell or similar tool, so as to meld the coils into one continuous surface.  The smoothing was continued using slick river rocks (many of which have been passed down through generations of family members) until a glossy burnished surface was obtained.  After these “green” pots had air dried, they were cured in an open air fire pit until almost rock hard.  The Catawba have never used any type glazes or paints on their pottery vessels but they did occasionally incise odd motifs which apparently relate to the more ancient AD 1000-1550 Mississippian Period.  This could mean that the Catawba did not migrate from the north in the seventeenth century but may have been in the Piedmont for a thousand or more years.  The beautiful mottled appearance, called fire cloud markings by collectors, is caused by the relatively low heat fire reduction method of burning the pottery.  The various shapes of these vessels included, but were not limited to, the basic cooking pot, the water jug, the milk pan, the wedding jug, the water pitcher, the flower pot, the snake effigy bowl, Indian Head jars and bowls, various animal effigy forms and smoking pipes.  The pipes included more than twenty variations, most of which were single person use or “personal” pipes.  The most unusual of these were the Indian Head pipes which depicted a feather headdress covered head said to be a depiction the eighteenth century Catawba King Hayler.  The pipe group also included the council or peace pipes which had four or more stems for simultaneous use by multiple smokers.  All these vessel types continue to be made by Catawba potters today but in limited numbers.  Until the 1970’s, very little Catawba pottery was signed and dated by the makers but that has now changed.  Many of the celebrated master potters of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as Susannah Owl (1847-1934), Arzada Sanders (1896-1989), Georgia Harris (1905-1997), and Doris Blue (1905-1985), signed few of their creations (until the mid 1970’s for the ones alive at that time) and the student has to have a great knowledge into individual potter’s techniques to know just who made much of this unsigned pottery.  Georgia Harris, acknowledged as the greatest modern Catawba potter, is the only tribal member to be awarded the prestigious National Heritage Fellowship Award (posthumously) from the National Endowment of the Arts.

Today collectors, scholars and museums actively pursue older Catawba pottery as well as the earthenware being made by contemporary ceramists.  And well they should since these vessels comprise the oldest art form still being produced in the Carolinas – this venerable pottery – this graceful pottery – this rare pottery – this Catawba Indian Pottery.

REFERENCES:

Blumer, Thomas J.                                           

CATAWBA INDIAN POTTERY:  THE SURVIVAL OF A FOLK TRADITION

2004

Bradford, W. R.                                              

THE CATAWBA INDIAN OF SOUTH CAROLINA

1946

Brown, Douglas S.                                          

THE CATAWBA INDIANS:  THE PEOPLE OF THE RIVER

1966

Fewkes, Vladimir                                            

“Catawba Pottery Making”, PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

1944

Harrington, M. R.                                            

“Catawba Indian Potters and Their Work”, AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST

1908

Lawson, John                                                  

THE HISTORY OF CAROLINA

1714

Merrell, James H.                                            

THE NEW WORLD INDIANS: CATAWBAS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS

FROM EUROPEAN CONTACT THROUGH THE ERA OF REMOVAL

1989

Copyright © 2013, Jim Maus. All rights reserved. – Email jimmaus@yadte

In AD 1567, the Spaniard Juan Pardo, led a group of explorers into western North Carolina and built a fort in Burke County, NC near the current town of Morganton.  It is believed that Pardo, being threatened by an Indian king in the mountains and also suspecting  that he might find gold there, sent some of his soldiers to southwest Virginia in order to investigate that region.  The leader of this group, Sergeant Hernando Moyano de Morales, later reported that they had burned an Indian town and killed a thousand natives, which is apparently true, except for the huge number killed.  These ancient Americans made a particular style of rattlesnake engraved shell gorget that is named for a Virginia salt springs town – Saltville.

Around AD 1600, a group of Indians moved to a site on the Dan River near it’s confluence with Town Fork Creek in current Stokes County, NC.  There they built houses, planted crops and raised their families in this village that today is called Upper Sauratown.  And they made, and/or brought with them, the style of rattlesnake engraved gorget used at the supposed Virginia massacre site, the Saltville style.  A retired Virginia Tech professor, Dr. Jim Glanville, has done extensive work in Virginia and North Carolina studying and cataloging the elusive Saltville rattlesnake engraved gorgets.  He has determined that almost all the approximately fifty known VA and NC examples of this artifact (most of which have been discovered by Dr. Glanville in old collections) were made and used only in a relatively small area in and around two locales, Washington/ Smyth County, VA (Saltville sits on the border of these two counties) and Stokes County, NC.  He has developed a viable theory that after the Spaniards attacked the Indian village in Saltville, the natives, who survived the disaster, gradually moved southeast and after about thirty years, finally settled in a new home – Upper Sauratown.  A few engraved shell gorgets have been found in an almost direct line between Smyth and Washington Counties and Stokes County which provides further evidence that these natives probably made this journey and temporarily settled, in more than one location, along the route before reaching Sauratown.

The shell gorget was made by laboriously cutting a piece of the whorl of a marine gastropod shell, usually in a circular shape, and then drilling two holes along one edge so it could be suspended around a person’s neck.  They were normally made in the size range of two to three inches in diameter but some extraordinary examples up to six inches across have been found.  They are named gorget from the French word “gorge” which was a medieval piece of armor used to protect the wearer’s throat.  Most Indian made shell gorgets were not engraved but some were embellished, usually on the concave surface, with various motifs.  In the case of the Saltville style gorget, the motif was a stylized snake.  The body of the serpent was engraved as coiled around the circular perimeter of the gorget and had cross hatching to simulate the snake’s scales and body markings.  At the small end of the body, there are several chevrons to replicate the snake’s rattles and near the center of the gorget are concentric circles used to simulate the head and eye.  One or more large triangles are adjacent to the eye circles (pointing to the left or right) and are considered to be a representation of the serpent’s mouth, often complete with teeth, but there are never examples of sharp reptile fangs in the mouth engravings.  On the opposite side of the eye, some of these gorgets have two oddly placed small triangles pointing toward the gorget edge. These are generally construed as the “weeping eye” motif which is a documented style of ceremonial art from the SECC.  A few of these gorgets have elongated cutouts or fenestrations and/or simple holes adjacent to the body to further delineate the overall shape of the snake.  There have been estimates of about 5,000 shell gorgets being found in the southeastern USA with maybe 15-20% of these being engraved in any fashion.  Five thousand, or even 15-20 % of that,  may seem like a large number for an artifact considered to be so rare but since there probably have been millions of Indian artifacts found in this country, this number is rather small, percentage wise.

In April of 1972, two men searched for Indian artifacts in the plowed ground on the Upper Sauratown Site.  They found a rare artifact – a rattlesnake engraved shell gorget.  But their luck continued as they immediately found two more of these Saltville style gorgets along with a rose quartz crystal.  This remarkable group could have been from a burial of one of the village elites some three to four hundred years ago.  The three gorgets were, indeed, rare but the inclusion of the red quartz crystal made this grouping amazingly unique.  Rose quartz is the only member of the quartz family of minerals that commonly does not grow itself into the crystalline form which makes this little red gemstone exceptional.  But other than rarity, why does the crystal make this small cluster of artifacts so unique? The people of the Mississippian and Historic Periods had many legends including one about a giant monster called by many names including Great Serpent, Uktena, Underwater Panther and Piasa.  This mythical creature supposedly lived in deep lake and river pools in the southeastern mountains and the fearsome supernatural had a physical structure in the shape of a snake or a cougar, with wings and occasionally an antlered head.  In the case of the serpent type imaginary being, its body was covered with scales that “glittered like fire light” and in the middle of its head was a shining red quartz crystal.  According to legend, if a human looked at the quartz crystal, he would be drawn to the creature by the shining light and would have been killed but if the human could kill the serpent and take the crystal from its head, he would be regarded as the greatest healer and could also foretell the future.  Any society priest and/or healer would certainly have treasured one of the crystals said to have come from the creature’s head and upon the shamans demise, would probably have had this jewel buried with him.  This particular rose quartz crystal is very worn, probably from being rubbed and touched and handled for many, many years.  The writer has no knowledge of another grouping of three engraved rattlesnake shell gorgets plus a rose quartz crystal being found together anywhere else in the southeast.  Yes this was an amazingly unique find and it leads to some questions. Did these artifacts come from the interment of a great leader or shaman and if so, just who was he or she?  Were the three shell gorgets made in Sauratown or brought from the Saltville vicinity? And even more interestingly, did the design influence for the rattlesnake shell gorget come from the mythical Great Serpent or Uktena?  Remember the two odd triangles beside the snake eye. Are they replicas of the wings of the mythical beast?  Or as some writers believe, did the snake design come from the Mexican deity Quetzalcoatl, also known as the feathered serpent god?  These questions will probably never be answered but that should not a determent from enjoying the rarity and beauty of the Three Saltville Style Gorgets and a Crystal.

REFERENCES:

Adkins, Jeff                                                                                         

Personal Communications

1988

Beck, Robin A.                                                                                   

“From Joara to Chiaha: Spanish Exploration of the Appalachian Summit Area, 1540-1568″,

SOUTHEASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY, VOL. 16

1997

Beck, Robin A, David G. Moore and Christopher B. Rodning  

“Identifying Fort San Juan: A Sixteenth Century Spanish Occupation at the Berry Site, North Carolina”,

SOUTHEASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY, VOL. 25

2006

Brain, Jeffrey P. and Phillip Phillips                                                       

SHELL GORGETS – STYLES OF THE LATE PREHISTORIC AND

PROTOHISTORIC SHOUTHEAST

1996

Glanville, James,   PhD                                                            

ART IN SHELL OF THE ANCIENT SOUTHWEST VIRGINIANS

2007

Hammett, Julia E.                                                                                 

“Shell Artifacts from the Carolina Piedmont”, 

THE SIOUAN PROJECT: SEASONS I AND II

1987

Kneberg, Madeline                                                                              

“Engraved Shell Gorgets and Their Associations”, 

THE TENNESSEE ARCHAEOLOGIST, VOL. 15

1959

Maus, James E.                                    `                                              

“The Dan River Rattlesnake Engraved Shell Gorgets”,  

CENTRAL STATES ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL, VOL. 35

1988

Maus, James E.                                                                                   

“Rattlesnake Engraved Shell Gorget: The Saltville Style”,

PREHISTORIC AMERICAN

1999

Muller, Jon D.                                                                                     

“Archaeological Analysis of Art Styles”,

THE TENNESSEE ARCHAEOLOGIST, VOL. 22

1966

Muller, Jon D.                                                                                     

“The Southern Cult”,

THE SOUTHEASTERN CEREMONIAL COMPLEX:  ARTIFACTS AND ANALYSIS

1989

Reilly, F. Kent III                                                                                

“People of Earth, People of Sky”,

HERO, HAWK, AND OPEN HAND

2004

Smith, John G.                                                                         

Personal Communications

2000