The Wickliffe Cox Mound Shell Gorget	by Dr. Sandy B. Carter, Jr
Central States Archaeological Societies 2023 April Journal	Big Canoe, Georgia

Figure 1. 2 ¾” Wickliffe Cox Mound shell gorget.

This paper discusses Cox Mound shell gorgets. It reviews some of the archaeological literature and summarizes the gorget’s chronology and geographical distribution and interprets the cosmological meanings of its two-dimensional engravings.

Figure 1 shows a 2 ¾” Cox Mound shell gorget from the Wickliffe Mounds (5Ba4) in Ballard County, Kentucky, and this specimen is currently curated by the author. This six-acre village dates to AD 1100-1350 and is in western Kentucky on top of a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, three miles south of the mouth of the Ohio River (Fig. 2, Ref. 1, p. 610). These mounds were owned and originally excavated by Fain King in 1932. This Wickliffe gorget was found in Mound C and was pictured by King in a pamphlet in 1938 or 1939 (Ref. 2) and also by his wife, Blanche Busey King, in Hobbies Magazine in 1936 (Ref. 3). It was later pictured by Wesler in 1992 (Ref. 4), Brain and Phillips in 1996 (Ref. 10, p. 434), Smith and Beahm in 2011 (Ref. 5) and Smith in 2019 (Ref. 6).

Fain King was an amateur archaeologist from Paducah, Kentucky. He and his wife called the Wickliffe Mounds the “Ancient Buried City” as well as the “King Mounds,” and commercially promoted the site and its excavated artifacts (Ref. 2, 3, 7 and 8). The King Collection was dispersed in 1941, and Dr. T.H. Young from Nashville, Tennessee acquired the Wickliffe Cox Mound shell gorget and numerous other artifacts. Many of the King artifacts obtained by Young were labeled with a piece of medical tape showing “FK” (Ref. 5).

The style name “Cox Mound Shell Gorget” was given by Muller in 1966 because this type of gorget was first found at the Cox Mound site (1Ja176) in Jackson County, Alabama (Ref. 9, pp.174-175). Characteristics of a Cox Mound shell gorget include the following: (1) four crested birds that appear to be either pileated woodpeckers or the extinct ivory-billed woodpeckers (Fig. 3); the pileated woodpecker has a sharp beak, and the ivory-billed woodpecker has a rounded or blunted beak (Ref. 19) that typically face counter clockwise, (2) a looped square, (3) a central cross inside a cross-hatched rayed circle and (4) engraving on the convex side (although the Wickliffe gorget is atypically engraved on the concave side (Ref. 6 and 10).

Cox Mound gorgets have been primarily found in the Middle Cumberland and Middle Tennessee River basins, and unique artistic features are found in each area. Those from the Cumberland River area were ...

 

Read the complete "The Wickliffe Cox Mound Shell Gorget" column in the Central States Archaeological Societies 2023 April Journal which can be purchased on-line after March 2024