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This is an excerpt from "Intrusive
Mound Picks".
Read the complete column in the Central
States Archaeological Societies 2022
July Journal which can be purchased on-line after March
2023
|
 |
| Figure 1: Greenstone pick, Hardin County, Tennessee. Length 11”.
Curation and photograph by the author. |
The Intrusive Mound Culture is a Late Woodland Culture dating to AD
500-1000. Characteristic of this culture in Ohio was their habit of
burying their dead in existing Hopewell Mounds (or Adena Mounds in
Indiana and West Virginia), i.e. intruding upon a prior culture’s
mounds. Less frequently, Intrusive Mound people buried their deceased
in open fields (Ref. 1).
Characteristic artifacts were found in Intrusive Mound burials and
include the following: Intrusive Mound picks, Intrusive Mound pipes,
Jack’s Reef cornered-notched projectile points (Ref. 2) and
stone human head effigies.
Intrusive Mound picks (Figs. 1,6,7,8,9) are often referred to as “ceremonial
picks.” They vary in length from 8-18”; have tapered
chisel-like ends; are made of granite, diorite, slate, shist or greenstone;
have been found in the Midwest (Ohio, Indiana and Illinois) and the
South (Carolinas, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama
and Mississippi); and “in center cross section (Midwestern
picks) are either square or have a rounded upper portion while the
bottom is flat” (Ref. 3). Southern picks only have a rounded
upper portion (Ref. 4, Fig. 2).
Figure 1 shows an 11” highly polished greenstone pick that
was a surface find in 1983 on a Late Woodland site (p. 258, Ref.
5) near the western bank of the Tennessee River opposite Savannah
in Hardin County, Tennessee. It has an engraved red ochered human
figure (Figs. 3a,3b) on one end, was accompanied by an engraved rib
bone pendant (Figs. 4a,4b) and was associated with Jack’s Reef
points (e.g. Fig. 5) in an adjacent field (Ref. 6). This pick has
been curated by the author since January 2011, and its provenance
includes the following: Andy Stevens (May 31, 1983), Jeff Wilkes
(Ref. 7), Jack Roberts, Kevin Pipes, Philip Helms and Tom Davis.
Four other Intrusive Mound picks have been ....
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This is an excerpt from "Intrusive
Mound Picks".
Read the complete column in the Central
States Archaeological Societies 2022
July Journal which can be purchased on-line after March
2023
|
 |
Figure 2. Rounded upper portion of cross
section of broken pick,
Cleburne County, Alabama. Curation by Tommy Beutell and photograph by the author.
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Read the complete column in the Central States Archaeological Societies 2022
July Journal which can be purchased on-line after March 2023 |
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