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This is an excerpt from "Lightning
Whelk".
Read the complete column in the
Central States Archaeological Societies 2020
July Journal which can be purchased on-line after March
2020
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| Figure 1. Lightning Whelk. |
The archaeological literature often has articles that are of interest
to the artifact collector. Unfortunately, the collectors’ publications
(for example, Central States Archaeological Journal and Prehistoric
American) rarely include reference to these scholarly archaeological
articles. Our CSAJ editor, Steven Cooper, has corrected this omission
over the past few years by asking scholars such as David Dye, Robert
Sharp, Kevin Smith, E.J. Neiburger and Richard Gramly to submit archaeologically
oriented articles to the CSAJ reader.
In January 2019, I shared with David Dye (Ref. 1) my interest in acquiring
more knowledge about Lightning Whelk (LW) conch shells and the ubiquitous
shell artifacts that were made from the LW and that have been found
in the mid-south and southeast since the middle to late Archaic period
(5000-1000 BC). Being a fine teacher and professor, Dr. Dye promptly
forwarded me an article entitled “The Lightning Whelk: an Enduring
Icon of Southeastern North American Spirituality” by Marquard
and Kozuch (Ref. 2). This paper has so enlightened my understanding
of LW shell artifacts and their iconography, that I call it a moment
of epiphany. I wish to share with the reader a “book review” of
the Marquard/Kozuch article, so that the collector might better appreciate
his or her shell artifacts. This is my interpretation of the article’s
salient points and I include quotes and paraphrasing from their paper.
The significance of this left to right spiral is that it mirrors the
cycle of life in an iconographical manner. More specifically for Native
American sun worshippers, “the clockwise spiral, a feature of
the spiral of the left handed LW, represented the daily path of the
sun and imitated the direction of life, from birth (east) toward death
(west)” (p. 9, Ref. 2) where sunset and darkness represent “the
upper world.”
It is important to remind the reader that the prehistoric Americans
lived in the northern hemisphere and the sun was seen in the southern
sky toward the equator. The sun rose in the east at the left side of
the horizon and moved from left to right across the sky to set in the
west at the right side of the horizon. This movement from left to right
is in a clockwise direction and is defined as sinistral and again mirrors
the spiral direction of the LW. Obviously, these directions are opposite
to what the modern person sees when looking at a globemap from the
6 o’clock position and watching the sun rise in the east at the
3 o’clock position and moving right to left and setting in the
west at the 9 o’clock position.
|
This is an excerpt from "Lightning
Whelk".
Read the complete column in the Central
States Archaeological Societies 2020
July Journal which can be purchased on-line after March
2020
|
 |
|
|
| Figure 2. Spiral drawings by Kozuch (Ref. 2). |
Thus, the LW spiral was a metaphor for the cycle of life and had spiritual
relevance. The theme was carried over to the iconography engraved on
shell artifacts made from the LW. For example, Marquardt and Kozuch
point out that the majority of shell artifacts come from the LW, and
that the majority of engraved artifacts have the left to right spiral
theme. By understanding the significance of clockwise or sinistral
(or less frequent counterclockwise or dextral) directions, one is able
to better interpret the iconography that is engraved on shell and many
other artifacts. Several examples of artifacts that demonstrate the
clockwise/sinistral theme are included in the following paragraphs.
The majority of rattlesnake shell gorgets (AD 1400-1650 [Ref. 3])
feature the .... |
