Birds and the Missing Frog: Animal Effigy Smoking Pipes from Cincinnati’s Madisonville and Turpin Sites

Birds and the Missing Frog Animal Effigy Smoking Pipesfrom Cincinnati' s Madisonville and Turpin Sites Robert A. Genheimer nthecenterofthediningroomtable,coveredwithtraysandmountsof prehistoric artifacts, stood a solitary sandstone object, not unlike many other items nearby: stone pestles and axes, delicately knapped spearpoints , and incised pottery sherds, broken pieces of what were once ceramic vessels. But this roughly carved smoking pipe was familiar. Early in my undergraduate days I had seen a photograph of it. Moreover,neatly arranged on a shelf in the archaeological collections storage room at the Cincinnati Museum Center CMC)were four painted plaster casts of the pipe. But, unlike most archaeological specimens, this one had a name. Amid its prehistoric companions on Betty Reinhart' s table rested the famous ,«, ,» Turpin Frog Pipe. L*.. * 12 Reinhart was preparing to auction her late husband Roy' s sizable collec- * 4*** 11#** tion ofprehistoric artifacts. Much of the » ty* 4 collection consisted of unprovenanced -· " ... stone,flint,shell, and pottery items. Roy Reinhart had acquired a considerable Philip Hinkle holding Turpin Frog Pipeat PhilipTurpin House, ca. 1907. Cincinnati Museum Center. amount from identified sites in southwest Ohio ( including at least the one pipe from the Turpin site)and particularly from the Madisonville site, located in the village of Mariemont, on Cincinnati' s eastern side. Excavated on and off for the last 125 years, Madisonville is arguably one of the most explored and the latest occupied sites in the Ohio Valley.James B. Griffin designated Madisonville the " type WINTER 2007 1 site" ( or,the site that gives its name to a culture period)of one of four Leographic foci of the newly formulated Fort Ancient Aspect in the carly 19405. More recently,the site has served 215 the type site of. the 'Mildisonvillc Horizon, a temporal marker ( or chronological identification)that defines Late Prehistoric ( ca.A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1650) settlements across the central Ohio Valley from the midfifteenth through the eighteenth centuries: Among the artifacts in Reinhart's Madisonville site collection were :hundreds of flint · arrow points and endscrapers thatrn ay have been . 1 employed in acquiring and preparing pelts for the burgeoning fur trade,as well as round gaming stones,dozens of worked . .' bone tools, two nearly complete pottery vessels and hundreds of vessel sherds,drilled animal teeth,glass jars of carbonized maize, and a series of complete and fragmented smoking pipes. Knowing that her husband would have wanted these specimens curated where others could view and study them, Betty Reinhart donated more than twelve hundred of these specimens to CMC. Beyond their significant archaeological research value,these objects constitute new elements in a long history of local and national archaeological investigations at these Cincinnatiarea sites. Madisonville, and to a lesser degree Turpin, served as important venues for some of the first systematic archaeological work in the Ohio Valley. At both Madisonville and Turpin, as the reputations of the sites became known, locals ceded control of excavations to a national institution , Harvard University' s Peabody Museum ( I IU]? M). In effect, in the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century,Cincinnati for a time took centerstage in the development of chronologies and methodologies in American archaeology,as well as providing a training ground for generations ofarchaeological practitioners. The notes,photographs,and collections from these sites, now housed at numerous institutions,including CMC, are thus critical components in the history of American archacology. Archaeology Takes Center Stage 1he central Ohio Valley and southern Ohio more particularly have been referred to as the cradle of American archaeology." In fact, as one scholar has written, tne development of American archaeology in the nineteenth century largely centered on the study of Ohio Mounds." I[ he vast majority of these mounds and earthworks were constructed during the Early Woodland, or Adena, period ( ca. 850 B.C. to B.C.A .D. boundary)and 2 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BIRDS AND THE MISSING FROG ROBERT A. GENHEIMER Middle Woodl·and, or Hopewell, period ( B.C.A .D. boundary tc,ca. A.D. 450).Some additional mounds and earthen embankments were erected during the Late Woodland ( ca. A.D. 450 to A.D. 1000)and early portions ofthe Late Prehistoric time periods. I[ he " discovery" of the reoion...