Shell gorget

A shell gorget is a Native American pendant, typically made from a polished and carved marine shell, worn around the neck as a piece of personal adornment. These gorgets are often engraved with intricate designs and sometimes highlighted with pigments or fenestrated (pierced with openings). Shell gorgets were particularly significant during the Mississippian period in North America, where they were associated with social status, rituals, and cosmological beliefs. 

Shell gorgets are a Native American art form of polished, carved shell pendants worn around the neck. The gorgets are frequently engraved, and are sometimes highlighted with pigments, or fenestrated (pierced with openings). Shell gorgets are crafted from large, flat pieces of marine shell, often originating from the Gulf of Mexico. They are typically circular or oval in shape and have holes drilled through them for attachment to a necklace or cord. Shell gorgets are primarily associated with the Mississippian culture in the southeastern United States, but they have also been found in other areas through trade and exchange networks. 

Shell gorgets were important items of personal adornment, but they also served as symbols of status, power, and connection to the spiritual realm. They were exchanged between leaders of different towns to solidify alliances and reinforce social hierarchies. The imagery on the gorgets, such as the Morning Star figure, often relates to specific myths and cultural narratives. 

The engravings on shell gorgets are not merely decorative; they often carry symbolic meaning related to cosmology, mythology, and social structure. Common motifs include figures in motion, sun and moon symbols, snakes, spiders, and cross-in-circle designs. 

Shell gorgets were most common in Eastern Woodlands of the United States, during the Hopewell tradition (200 BCE – 500 CE) and Mississippian cultural period (c. 800–1500 CE); however, tribes from other regions and time periods also carved shell gorgets. The earliest shell gorgets date back to 3000 years BP. They are believed to have been insignia of status or rank, either civic, military, or religious, or amulets of protective medicine. Due to the placement of the holes in the gorgets, they are also thought to be spinners that could produce whistling sounds.

Materials and techniques

Lightning whelk (Sinistrofulgur perversum) is the most common shell used for gorgets. Other shells, such as the true conch or Strombus, as well as freshwater mussels, are also carved into gorgets. Today, due to environmental causes, harvested lightning whelks are significantly smaller than in precontact times. These earlier shells typically ranged from 6 to 12 inches (15 to 30 cm) in length.

Harvested off the coasts of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, the shells were traded through the Eastern Woodlands. This native trade continued into the 16th century.

Gorgets are carved from the penultimate whorl of the shell. A blank is cut or broken out, then ground smooth. Holes for suspension and decoration are drilled, sometimes with a bow drills or chert drills. The gorget forms a concave shape and, when engraved, the interior is polished and decorated.

While most gorgets are circular, some are shaped as rectangles with rounded corners, maskettes, or other novel shapes. An extremely elaborate pendant from Spiro Mounds is shaped as two hands connected by a common beaded bracelet.

Archaic and Hopewell

Adena cultures created gorgets from slate and copper, but the Hopewell Exchange System brought exotic shells from the Gulf northward. Initially, Hopewellian peoples carved plain shell gorgets around 1000 BCE. Engraved gorgets appeared in the late Hopewell. A Glacial Kame culture marine-shell gorget from the Great Lakes dates from 1000 BCE and features an engraved bear or opossum with an umbilical cord.

Mississippian

As Mississippian shell gorgets were traded widely, common designs have a widespread geographical distribution. Calusa people of southern Florida harvested and carved gorgets. Coiled rattlesnakes gorgets were found among the Guale Indians of Georgia.

Mask gorgets, although rare, are found throughout the southeast, with the most prominent site clusters occurring in the Ohio River valley, eastern Tennessee, and the Arkansas delta, although finds have been found as far afield as North Dakota. The masks have bas-relief noses, drilled eyes, engraved or drill mouths, and sometimes forked-eye motifs or zigzags under the eyes. Small shell cameos, under two inches wide, were found at Spiro Mounds. Although dating is difficult in the current archaeological context, these masks are likely to be a later phenomenon (c. 1500–1700): although they are often found in sites that also produce 16th century Spanish trade goods, they are entirely absent from classic mound sites, which were active until the fourteenth century.

Iconography

Iconography on the shell gorgets comes from the Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere. Extremely common designs include the triskele, coiled rattlesnake, spider, chunkey player, and birdman, sometimes called a Falcon Impersonater.

Native Americans, art historians, and anthropologists all have a wide range of often conflicting interpretations of the Mississippian iconography. Coiled rattlesnake gorgets were often found in the graves of young people and are believed to relate to age as opposed to status. The forked-eye motif, commonly identified as markings from a peregrine falcon, dates back to the Hopewell exchange, and the symbol references excellent vision and hunting skill among Muscogee Creek people. "Strength of Life" design is interpreted by Kvokovtee Scott and Phillip Deer (Muscogee medicine man) as referencing a whirlwind and dancing movement.

There are over 30 pre-contact examples of the Cox Mound gorget style, found in Tennessee and northern Alabama and dating from 1250 to 1450 CE. The Cox Mound gorget style features four woodpecker heads facing counter-clockwise, a four-lopped square motif, and a sometimes a cross within a rayed circle. It has been interpreted as a visualization of the Yuchi myth of the winds. The four-looped square, or guilloche, is considered by some to be a "whirling sun" motif, or a priestly or chiefly litter; by some, the earth held up by cords to the Sky Vault at the four cardinal points; and by others, the path of life with four stages of maturity. Woodpeckers are associated with the four winds and are medicine birds that can extract illnesses among Muscogee Creeks. The birds are also sometimes interpreted as the four winds. The rayed circle or sun is interpreted literally, a deity or ancestors, council, and/or sacred fire. The entire design could also illustrate the Yuchi myth of the winds.

A gorget from the Castalian Springs Mound Site in Tennessee features a man holding a mace and severed head. This has been interpreted by some anthropologists as a "flying shaman."

Some agreement can be found in interpreting the cross-in-circle design, which references the sun and the ceremonial fire, fed by four logs aligned to cardinal directions. Another design widely agreed upon is the water spider with a cross-in-circle design on its cephalothorax. Spider gorgets have a widespread distribution but are commonly found in what is now Illinois.

Historic gorgets

Turtle shells and stones have also infrequently been carved into gorgets. In the 18th century, metal medallions replaced shell gorgets among Eastern tribes. In the late 19th century, women from tribes along the Colorado River, such as the Quechan wore defenestrated gorgets made from bivalve shells and strung on vegetal cordage.

Contemporary

Shell carving is experiencing a revival among Southeastern tribes today. Knokovtee Scott (Cherokee Nation/Muscogee, 1951–2019) studied under tribal historians, traditionalists, and medicine men. Scott carved gorgets with purple freshwater mussel shell harvested from near Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Sandy Fife Wilson (Muscogee) of Oklahoma carves shell gorgets and whelk shell cups, as does Antonio Grant (Eastern Band Cherokee) of North Carolina.

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