Trends and Traditions in Southeastern Zooarchaeology

7. Embedded: Five Thousand Years of Shell Symbolism in the Southeast

7 Embedded Five Thousand Years of Shell Symbolism in the Southeast Aaron Deter-Wolf and Tanya M. Peres In 1882/83, the Rev. J. Owen Dorsey recorded a description of mourning rituals and war customs among the Kansa, in which he described the contents of a sacred war bundle. This bundle contained five layers of wrappings, in the center of which was a “clam shell . . . brought from ‘the great water at the east’ by the ancestors of the Kansas” (Dorsey 1885: 673). Dorsey did not see the “clam shell” in person but records that the item was “made like the face of a man, with eyes, face, teeth, etc.” This description and a sketch provided to Dorsey by the bundle keeper, Pahanle-gaqli (figure 7.1) shell, reveal that the item included in the Kansa war bundle was a Chickamauga-style shell mask gorget. This distinctive late prehistoric artifact type, typically manufactured from the outer whorl of a whelk (Busycon sp.) shell, appears throughout the American Mid-South during the Mississippian period (circa 800–1500 BC). The ideology and artifact complex of the Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere (MIIS; previously known as the Southern Cult and the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex) was centered in the southeastern United States and peaked 500–600 years before Dorsey visited the Kansa (Lankford 2011; Reilly and Garber 2007). This suggests that the Kansa were either reusing a Mississippian shell mask some 500 years after its creation (Howard 1956) or were manufacturing new objects reminiscent of the MIIS. Regardless, the principal significance of the shell artifact from 162 · Aaron Deter-Wolf and Tanya M. Peres Figure 7.1. Sketch of the “clam shell” from the Kansa war bundle (A, after Dorsey 1885: 673, fig. 3) and a comparative Chickamauga-style Mississippian period shell mask gorget (B, after McCurdy 1915: 65, fig. 11). the Kansa bundle as related to Dorsey was not the iconography depicted on its surface but rather the raw material the artifact was constructed from. That material, marine shell, was symbolic of the ancestral origins of the Kansa along the coastal Southeast. The myriad of imagery depicted on marine shell during the late prehistoric period in the American Southeast was meaningful and significant and has provided the basis for important examinations of Mississippian art and iconography (e.g., Brain and Phillips 1996; Lankford et al. 2011; Phillips and Brown 1978, 1984; Reilly and Garber 2007). We argue, however , that the selection of marine gastropods by late prehistoric artisans as an iconographic substrate was explicit and deliberate. By the late prehistoric period, shells were embedded with 5,000 years of physical and symbolic geography. This chapter examines ancient Southeastern Native Americans’ use of freshwater and marine shell to recall their ancestral origins ; sanctify and lay claim to the landscape through the construction of deliberate landmarks; legitimize political power through the acquisition and display of symbolic, exotic material; and signify and enable access to supernatural power. Ancestral Landscapes and the Consecration of Riparian Space Recent research by Saunders and Russo (2011) shows that prehistoric occupants of the Florida panhandle were engaged in deliberate exploitation Five Thousand Years of Shell Symbolism in the Southeast · 163 of shell by at least 7200 BP. By two thousand years later, in the Late Archaic , shell was used as a raw material at sites throughout the interior and coastal Southeast. It is widely assumed that ancient inhabitants of the region consumed invertebrate animals and deposited the leftover calcium carbonate shell in specific locations, resulting in the formation of distinctive features identified archaeologically as shell middens, mounds, and rings. The specific social or ritual function of these constructions is not readily clear (e.g., Claassen 2010; Marquardt 2010a; Saunders and Russo 2011). Regardless, both freshwater and marine mollusks constituted convenient , plentiful, and durable construction materials that were deliberately selected for use in monument construction. The available evidence suggests that concerted shell-bearing deposits appeared in the interior (noncoastal) portion of the Mid-South by at least 8000 year cal. BP. The earliest shell middens along the Duck River in Tennessee and Green River in Kentucky formed around 8000 and 6200 cal. BP, respectively (see summary in Claassen 2010). Radiocarbon dates recently obtained from shell-bearing sites along the Cumberland River in the vicinity of Nashville, Tennessee, indicate initial shell midden and mound formation during the period circa 6600–7000 cal. BP (Deter-Wolf and Peres 2014; Miller et al. 2012; Peres...