Winged Bannerstones and the Bi-Lobed Arrow Motif

[DC]

18 or 19 years???  Kind of takes the romance out of primitive living, doesn't it?

[Zuma]

Very strange reports
Out of coureosity do they mention anything about drills, or who drilled all those objects?
Any workshops etc.?
Thanks, Zuma

[JackCrafty]

Zuma, I looked through the data in the Rothschild report and didn't find a single mention of a drill in the many artifacts found.  They may have been classified under "projectile points" assuming they used stone drills.

Weren't these bannerstones drilled with rivercane and sand anyway?  The rivercane wouldn't show up in the burials because of decomposition, I assume.

[JacksonCash]

Showed this thread to my wife, she's got more questions than answers right now. She's looking through some of the links you guys have provided in this thread and the other over in Primitive Skills that Zuma started. Is there a good accounting for what was found in each grave?

Do any of you know the range in which banner stones- particularly the winged variety were found?

For my part- I'm not convinced that WINGED banner stones were used on atlatls yet, but I haven't read nearly as much of this stuff as you guys. I definitely think that the accountings and pictures that swampy has provided show that different shapes of banner stones were used as weights on shafts of atlatls. My question would be why do this instead of tying them on or mounting some other way.

Additionally- what constitutes a bannerstone? It looks to me (again not well read on the subject) that the term is used to describe many different objects.
Still trying to convince my wife to start an account so she can throw her two cents in with out my mental filters getting in the way.

[Zuma]

Carlston Annis Shell Mound - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



 Beside 390 human bodies, the site produced the skeletons of 28 dogs that showed evidence of having been buried.[3]:272 Many of the bones at the site were substantially decomposed, so the painstaking osteological research undertaken at the comparable Indian Knoll site (15 OH 2) could not be repeated at Carlson Annis.[3]:274 Nevertheless, some information could be determined from certain bodies: ages ranged from infancy well into adulthood,[3]:284 more than half of the bodies (215) were accompanied by artifacts — of which 73% were matters of personal clothing, such as shell gorgets, beads, or hairpain. Studies of other sites in the region suggest that some resources were plentiful enough to permit populations to double approximately every thirty years; s[ Of the 4,000+ flint pieces found at the site, nearly half (1,997) were projectile points of various sorts, with corner-notched and long-shallow-notched shapes being the most common. Other types of flint stone tools included approximately 500 knives, 23 lithic cores, more than 500 drills, and approximately 1,000 scrapers.[3]:298 Artifacts of ground stone included almost fifty axes, seventy atlatl weights, more than one hundred mauls, more than one hundred sandstone discs, more than two hundred hammerstones, and nearly three hundred pestles.[3]:2Most of the antler pieces were projectile points or pieces of unknown purpose, while nearly all of the shells were discs that were being used as
Radiocarbon dating has suggested that some artifacts at Carlston Annis date back to 5424 BC, although most artifacts dated between 3200 and 1400 BC.[5]:4 Most of its projectile points clearly dated from the Archaic periodbeads.The numbers and types of non-human bones at the mound were typical of Archaic shell middens in the region,[3]:318 as was the number of antler pieces,[3]:318 although tools made of human bone were unusually numerous.[ No direct evidence of specific techniques was apparent from this excavation, but substantial circumstantial evidence was present.[3]:342 Because very few burials were accompanied by stone atlatls, it is believed that many individuals were also buried with wooden atlatls (comparable to modern Eskimo technology) that have not survived to the present.[3]:346 Comparison with Indian Knoll suggests that early inhabitants at Annis used all-wooden atlatls more commonly than the Indian Knoll people.

[JackCrafty]

DC, the infant mortality rate and the mortality rate of children 1 - 4yrs was high.  That sways the average to the young side.

Jackson, the term "bannerstone" includes all sorts of shapes, as you guessed.  I have found few references for the pictures of the artifacts at Indian Knoll but they are in books that I have not purchased.  If I can't find free sources for the pictures, I'll buy a couple books.... soon.

[swamp monkey]

Weren't these bannerstones drilled with rivercane and sand anyway?  The rivercane wouldn't show up in the burials because of decomposition, I assume.

River cane drilling experiments result in cores that look exactly like those found in archeological sites. 

Credit where credit is due:  I based these drawings off of photos taken by Larry Kinsella in his bannerstone drilling project.  Look at Larry's informational Megalithics website for more details.  http://flintknapper.com/GENICULATE.htm  Thanks to Larry for his permission to use his images. 

[swamp monkey]

Do any of you know the range in which banner stones- particularly the winged variety were found?

below is a general distribution map of bannerstones.  I ginned this map up in photoshop based on one in the book Bannerstones of the North American Indian.  by Byron Knoblock.   This book breaks down the myriad fo bannerstones into styles and maps them.   Certain styles might be found exclusively in the upper Ohio River valley while another style would be over the Carolinas.  But suffice it to say that a winged bannerstone occurred over almost every part of the range of drilled bannerstones. 

[swamp monkey]

DC, the infant mortality rate and the mortality rate of children 1 - 4yrs was high.  That sways the average to the young side.

Jackson, the term "bannerstone" includes all sorts of shapes, as you guessed.  I have found few references for the pictures of the artifacts at Indian Knoll but they are in books that I have not purchased.  If I can't find free sources for the pictures, I'll buy a couple books.... soon.

Folks, below is a page out of Knoblock's book Bannerstones   As you can see he focuses on the eastern North American area where drilled stones were used.  He does not focus on bar weights of the east nor the stones attached to atlalts in the western North America.

The word bannerstone was coined because one of the early thoughts on their function was that they fit on a stick and served as a banner of some importance.

[swamp monkey]

Is there a good accounting for what was found in each grave?

Do any of you know the range in which banner stones- particularly the winged variety were found?

 My question would be why do this instead of tying them on or mounting some other way.

/quote]



Jackson, as for what is in the graves, Webb's 1946 account does a good job of at least listing and quantifying what was found in each of the 880 graves.  it is more than I am wiling type out at length.  Is there something in particular I can fish out for you?

Regarding your second question, I think you have struck upon a good one.   yeah, why would they!  This may rank up there with how many licks it takes to get to the center of a toostsie pop.  The world may never know.

I wish I could tell you.

[JacksonCash]

In regards to the "why would they" question - a running joke among my wife's class mates is anything they can't directly explain was used for ceremonial purposes. This makes reading through a lot of archaeological texts quite amusing as you can mentally replace 'ceremonial purposes' with 'we don't have a clue'. 

[swamp monkey]

another geographic location with weights and atlatl spurs.  http://paleoplanet69529.yuku.com/topic/60954/6000-year-old-Atlatls-from-the-SE#.VLCiBIFOKrU   Also in Kentucky

Oh and some petroglyphs from Jeffers Petroglyphs Historic Site, Minnesota, and totally in the range of bannerstone creation and use.  See what you think. 

site information: http://sites.mnhs.org/historic-sites/jeffers-petroglyphs

[DC]

In regards to the "why would they" question - a running joke among my wife's class mates is anything they can't directly explain was used for ceremonial purposes. This makes reading through a lot of archaeological texts quite amusing as you can mentally replace 'ceremonial purposes' with 'we don't have a clue'. 

I've always suspected that There is just too much "ceremonial" stuff.

[swamp monkey]

This caught my attention in a big way.  The image below is an artistic rendition of a broken section of a whelk shell engraving found in a mound at Spiro OK.  The date is attributed to 1200 AD.  What does that look like to you?

It was depicted in the book Phillips, Philip and Brown, James A. , Pre-Columbian Shell Engravings from the Craig Mound at Spiro, Oklahoma. Vol. I, Peabody Museum Press. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1978.   Plate 9, Figure 12.  I am going to have to save up my "allowance" to afford this book.  I enjoy the shell art stuff anyway; now I have a new reason to get it and learn more. 

If that is a two hole atlatl like I think it is, then that would be evidence that the atlatl was indeed a known object well into the Mississippian period.   Furthermore, if that is a weight on that atlatl (perhaps is and perhaps it isn't), then atlatl weights were a known item into the Mississippian period too.  That looks like a bar weight strapped to a smaller shaft.  I wondered how those bar weights would have looked on an atlatl.  This may be a clue - if it is indeed an atlatl depiction.

Take a look and make up your own mind.  This really makes me think.

[JackCrafty]

Wish we could see the whole thing.  Definitely looks like an atlatl !

Three possibilities:  It's an atlatl with a weight attached, it's a game stick used to throw something other than a dart, or a head scratcher for those hard-to-reach areas under your war bonnet.