Shell Gorget

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 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,C. Andrew Buchner
"Cox Mound Gorget."
''The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture.'' (retrieved 23 July 2010) 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.Dreiss, Meredith L
"Marine Shell Ornaments, Icons and Offerings."
''Texas Beyond History.'' (retrieved 24 July 2010) Today, due to environmental causes, harvested lightning whelks are significantly smaller than in precontact times. These earlier shells typically ranged from 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.Dubin, 163

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.Dubin, 202 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

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