artefact; necklace; ornament

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artefact; necklace; ornament

Object Type: artefact; necklace; ornament
Museum number: Am,S.602
Description: Pierced animal bone, carved into the shape of claws (three in total), one identifiable as a phalange, and two shell fragments. . Originally part of a necklace/body ornament.
Cultures/periods: Adena; Early Woodland Period; Hopewell; Middle Woodland Period
Excavator/field collector: Field Collection by: Ephraim George Squier; Field Collection by: Edwin Hamilton Davis
Findspot: Excavated/Findspot: Ross County, Mound 1, 6 miles south of Chillicothe. Re. Pl. II Squier and Davis' "Ancient Monuments". (?)
Materials: bone (animal); shell
Curator's comments: Part of an assemblage recovered from an isolated mound sited on a terrace overlooking High Bank Works (marked as Mound 1 in Squier annd Davis' volume (Plate II)). The necklace was recovered from around the neck of a skeleton positioned inside a grave lined with unworked logs, the skeleton much decayed. "Around the neck of the skeleton, forming a triple row, and retaining their position as originally strung and deposited with the dead, were several hundred beads, made of the compact portion of marine shells and of the tusks of some animal" (Squier and Davis(1848) P.163).
Bibliographic references: Stevens 1870 / Flint Chips: A Guide to Prehistoric Archaeology as Illustrated in the Blackmore Museum, Salisbury. (P.453-454); Squier & Davis 1848 / Ancient Monuments of the Ohio Valley (P.162 - 163)
Location: Not on display
Acquisition name
Acquisition date: 1931
Department: Africa, Oceania and the Americas
Registration number: Am,S.602
Additional IDs: CDMS number: Am1931E1.602 (old CDMS no.)

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