全部拍賣 / Sculptures / Mississippian Carved Stone Implement
Native American, Mississippian culture. A compact section of pale, chalk-toned stone worked into a stepped silhouette, its broad upper blade tapering to a narrower shank that suggests the object once seated into a haft or continued into a symmetrical opposing wing. The surfaces are ground smooth, softened further by burial, with warm ferruginous staining blooming across one face in ochre patches. Edges retain their beveled finish where later fracture has not intervened. Objects of this class, ground and polished rather than flaked, served the Mississippian world as atlatl weights, ceremonial banners, or prestige regalia rather than as working tools, their value residing in labor invested and stone selected. The stepped profile here is consistent with a fragment of a winged or pick-form bannerstone, perhaps carried as an emblem of standing within a mound-center community. Bannerstones are among the most enigmatic artifacts of eastern North America. Ground from banded slate, quartzite, limestone, and other visually distinctive stones, then drilled with a central perforation using cane and sand abrasive, they demanded hundreds of hours of labor for objects that show almost no use wear. The prevailing interpretation treats them as atlatl (spearthrower) weights, adding mass and stabilizing the throw, but their frequent deposition in burials, their fragility, and their aesthetic elaboration argue equally for a role as insignia. Their floruit lies in the Archaic period, with ground-stone regalia traditions persisting into the Woodland and Mississippian horizons, so a firm cultural placement for any isolated fragment depends heavily on find context. Item # 202352
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