Winged Bannerstones and the Bi-Lobed Arrow Motif

[JacksonCash]

Why would a parent name their child Phillip Phillips?

[swamp monkey]

Why would a parent name their child Phillip Phillips?

i knew a guy named Kelley Scott Kelley.        Same thought occurs.


I did some reading in The Petroglyphs and Pictographs of Missouri by C. Diaz-granados and J.R. Duncan 2000  Univ. of Alabama Press, and found these two depictions.

One is an atlatlist just for fun.  The other may very well be an atlatl with three bannerstones on it.  Make up your own mind. 

[swamp monkey]

Very interesting to see that some of the atlatl weights were intentionally broken.  I wonder how they determined that.

I did some reading last night and ran across several instances where the bannerstone was in diverse parts of the grave.  In other words, one piece near the head, but the other near the feet.  This shows separation that would not be explained by the deterioration process or freeze/thaw.  Some one had to break it and then place it in the grave. 

[JackCrafty]

Very interesting.  The questions I would have would be:  How was the person buried?  In what position?  Some were buried upright, if I remember correctly.  That is, in a "squatting" position and not lying down.  If the body became "squished" over time, then the two parts may have become separated. If the body was originally buried laying down, it would be harder to account for the separation.   The other question would be, are there any other artifacts present that were broken and NOT separated?  If the bannerstone was the only item that was separated, then yeah, it would appear that the break was intentional.

[swamp monkey]

Very interesting.  The questions I would have would be:  How was the person buried?  In what position?  Some were buried upright, if I remember correctly.  That is, in a "squatting" position and not lying down.  If the body became "squished" over time, then the two parts may have become separated. If the body was originally buried laying down, it would be harder to account for the separation.   The other question would be, are there any other artifacts present that were broken and NOT separated?  If the bannerstone was the only item that was separated, then yeah, it would appear that the break was intentional.

I think I have an answer on your first question.  For the graves where broken bannerstones were reported, the bodies were largely laid out like they were "sleeping" (my word for expressing that). I can't answer your second question about other artifacts being broken.  I will have to read some more. 

[Zuma]

At first with all the burial descriptions I thought this great mound area was similar to
the earthen mounds intentionally built. But their are just refruse middens, discarded
shells piled up along the river bank. I wonder if the minerals from the shells is what
 preserved the bones?
Zuma

[mullet]

Let me run another idea by you guys, Do you think that the banner stone could have made the atlatl a multi-tool? Say a heavy club, too?

[swamp monkey]

Perhaps. Some could while others could not.  Some of the material used is mildly breakable from the get go.  Others have painfully low amounts of mass around the drilled hole.  Again, breakage would be imminent. 

Some would be tough enough, but not enough of them, IMO, to support the notion. 

I like the out of the box thinking though.

[mullet]

That just came to mind while looking at the illustrations above.

[JacksonCash]

Stopped by a museum near my house the other day, snapped a couple of pictures of the two examples of banner stones they had there, as well as a ton of points. Soon as I can get them off my camera I will post them to add to the discussion here.

[JackCrafty]

Awesome!

[JacksonCash]

Here are the banner stones - sorry the pictures aren't very clear:


And this one:

[JackCrafty]

Hmmm.. at first glance, those artifacts look unfinished.  At worst, they are modern made.  I'm a little suspicious because all the material seems to be similar.  Don't mean to be a party pooper.  Just my opinion.

[JacksonCash]

I don't think I have a picture of the card that was on the display, but I can do some digging on it. I know a lot of what was there was made of Bayport chert, which is a local stone. All else fails I can go back to the museum this weekend. I wanted to get the name of the guy who manufactured the weapon replicas (which i neglected to take a picture of, too excited that I saw banner stones). They had a celt, spear, atlatl(no weight at all) and a dart. I'll post the other pictures I took in another thread, as they don't have relevance here. I am also near the university that set up the displays, so I can inquire as to their provenance.

EDIT: FYI, I thought a lot of the points looked unfinished myself, but I thought at the time that it might be bias from all the magical stuff that gets posted to the primitive skills and cavemen only boards.

[JackCrafty]

Cool.     Let us know what you find out.

Jackson, what area are you from?  I could try and find pictures of artifacts for your area.