Did Native American Indians Make Pottery With Snail Shell Decoration

The coastal prairies and marshlands region of Texas retains only traces of the rich artistic endeavors of its native peoples, tantalizing reminders of the inventiveness, imagination, and traditions prevailing over thousands of years. Unlike the Trans-Pecos and Lower Pecos regions, where massive canyon walls served equally canvasses for paintings in the past, the Texas littoral region had no comparable medium for expression. A diverseness of natural resources, however, enabled fine artistry on a smaller scale.

The region'south artistic wealth is primarily shell ornaments, os artifacts, and clay pottery. Using simple tools and innovative technologies, native artisans transformed marine and freshwater shells and animal bones into intricate ornaments and ritual objects, and clays and natural pigments into pottery vessels and torso paints. Although less arable in this region, chert, sandstone, and quartz materials were sometimes chipped, pecked, or carved into items conspicuously intended for ritual purposes. Another form of artistry—the elaborately tattooed and painted bodies of native peoples of the region—is often mentioned in the journals of 17th- and 18th-century Europeans.

Littoral artists used a diverseness of designs and motifs in their crafts. Although some were merely aesthetically pleasing; others carried important symbolic messages. Given the region'due south location, some of the iconography may have been influenced by cultures in nearby regions: especially those of the Lower Mississippi Valley and southern Louisiana to the northeast.

These diverse expressions of the region's artisans reflect cultural and religious traditions of their time. Lacking written records and living traditions, almost all of the precise meanings have been lost. It is apparent, however, that the production of art and ritual items played an integral office in the lives of the native peoples of the coastal prairies and marshlands.

Numerous ornaments and busy objects take been recovered from archeological sites along the Texas declension. These "portable art" objects—necklaces, musical instruments, pottery, and other items—likely were carried from camp to military camp and sometimes traded or exchanged over long distances. Other objects, including some of the near intricately designed and unusual, were placed in graves of the dead in coastal cemeteries. These offerings indicate the importance of creative and symbolic expression in coastal funerary rituals.

Shell Artifacts

Worked vanquish is the hallmark artistic expression of the coastal prairies and marshlands. The estuaries, river deltas, bays and beaches provided a diverse assortment of shell for the natives to utilize. The sparkling interior of the freshwater mussel and radial symmetry of the lightning whelk caught the eye of the littoral natives. Leaving aside the use of shell for toolmaking (see Marine Shell Tools), shells were also made into necklaces, "tinklers," and gorgets. Shellfish are found in various contexts along the Texas coast and range in size from the large lightning whelk (Busycon perversum pulleyi), to the diminutive infinitesimal dwarf olive (Olivella minuta). Throughout North America, many native peoples associated shells with death, fertility, and rebirth; therefore, information technology is non surprising that nigh artistically modified shells have been found in funerary contexts. (Run across Marine Shell Ornaments, Icons and Offerings to learn more than and run across other examples.)

To gauge by quantity, quality, and diversity of grade, native artisans favored ane shell over all others from the Texas coast: the lightning whelk. This rather big carnivorous gastropod, different nigh all others, is sinistrally spiraled (counterclockwise, to the left), a peculiar geometry that is said to take given the beat special symbolic importance. Ornaments made from these shells are found are in both prehistoric and historic contexts along the length of the Texas coast too as in sites hundreds of miles inland, indicating their importance in trade. Whelk shell was used to brand disk chaplet, tubular beads, "danglers," pendants, and gorgets

Avocational archeologist Beak Birmingham of Victoria has reconstructed the technique of making a whelk pendant similar to the ones found at the Early on Primitive Buckeye Knoll site on the central Texas coastal plain. Using simple tools—a bifacial stone pocketknife and wood and leather pump drill equipped with a chipped-stone tip—Birmingham used a groove and snap technique to create and decorate nearly identical pendants with patterns of lightly drilled impressions. He arrived at this technique through several experiments: using an alternate tool—a sandstone abrader—took nigh twice as long to cut a groove in the shell.

Freshwater mussel pendants and beads from the Oso site in Nueces County. Notice the fine denticulation on the edges of the pendants. TARL Archives.

This ocher-covered shell found at the Caplen Mound site likely was used equally a container for mixing pigment. TARL Collections.

Strand of olive shell beads from the Mitchell Ridge site. The spire and lower office of the snail's beat were cut off and ground down to create a suspension hole through the central whorl. Photograph by Robert Ricklis.

Necklace from the Bolivar Peninsula made from long tubular conch crush beads spaced with smaller beads. The conch shell pendant has been worked to a near-perfect circumvolve. TARL Collections.

Very large lightning whelk gorget decorated with cross-shaped rows of lightly drilled impressions and nicked edges. From Rio Grande delta surface area, Tamaulipas, Mexico, A.E. Anderson Drove. TARL Collections.

The cardinal spire, or columella, of the whelk was too used to make ornaments. The coiled, elongate structure of the spires made for interesting hair ornaments; they too could be drilled lengthwise into long beads and strung into necklaces or "dangled" from a drilled hole through one cease of the columella. Several graves at Mitchell Ridge contain whelk columella chaplet. These ornaments may be indicators of condition or wealth, thus it is interesting to note that at that site whelk beads are institute primarily in the graves of developed males and children.

Decorated Bones

Bone was another important artistic medium utilized past the natives of the Texas declension. Some of the well-nigh proficient craftsmanship is found on bone artifacts made from a diverse range of animals. The bones of bison, deer, whooping cranes, and fifty-fifty humans were carved into ornaments, ritual objects, and musical instruments in prehistoric and historic times.

An unusual example of artistry comes from several graves at Mitchell Ridge. Frail bird-os whistles were made from whooping crane ulnas (wing or forelimb basic). Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric flutes were engraved with a diversity of geometric patterns. Chevrons, hour-glasses, and rectangular designs are found mid-shaft on these ornate instruments. These unusual grave offerings are but known from the Galveston Bay area and further north and due east in southern Louisiana and southeast Texas.

Conch columella "danglers" from the Rio Grande delta. TARL Collections.

Necklace of conch beat and glass beads from a grave at the Mitchell Ridge Cemetery on Galveston Island. Photograph by Robert Ricklis.

A small bone decoration from the burying of a woman at Caplen Mound cemetery site (41GV1) was carved into an elongate shape resembling a feather. The piece has incised horizontal bars bracketing a series of punctuations as well as carefully serrated edges. Because it was institute near the skull, investigators speculated that information technology may have been a hair ornament. Another interesting Caplen Mound grave offering was a decorated turtle carapace laid in the burial of an infant. Drill holes in the shape of a "U" suggest the carapace served every bit a breast plate or rattle. As a rattle, the carapace may have been used in shamanic rituals. Achieving a trance state through repetitive music, which typically involved rattles and chanting, often accompanied shamanic ceremonies. Thus, busy bone grave appurtenances probably served a role in this life and the side by side.

Other activities are represented in 3 pairs of bone gaming pieces incised with crosshatched triangles recovered from a prehistoric grave at the Harris County Boys School site. Too sport, gaming pieces may besides accept been used as divining tools by shamans to translate letters from the gods. The oracular nature of these gaming pieces is enhanced by the option of os as a medium.

Pottery

Ideological motifs are dynamic expressions, irresolute with fourth dimension and cultural contact. Ceramics provided native artists another medium for expression. On the upper Texas coast, Tchefuncte pottery, with cultural ties to the southeastern United States, appeared in the expanse every bit early as 400-500 B.C., followed by the Goose Creek and San Jacinto series in the early centuries A.D. On the central Texas coast, Late Prehistoric groups ancestral to the Karankawa produced a distinctive pottery termed by archeologists as Rockport ware. The Karankawa continued producing vessels of this type into Historic times.

Goose Creek and San Jacinto ceramics are institute mainly n of Matagorda Bay and appear to take common motifs with Lower Mississippi Valley and southern Louisiana ceramics. The artist either used a rocker stamp or a fine incising tool to decorate the ceramic with culturally important motifs. Stamped ceramics date as early every bit A.D. 100, while incised ceramics appointment as early as A.D. 750. For case, ceramic sherds recovered from Mitchell Ridge have horizontal, vertical, and cross-hatched lines below the rim as do sherds recovered the Lower Mississippi Valley and southern Louisiana. These shared motifs suggest these 2 cultures were in close contact. Perhaps the common motifs limited commonalities in cosmological and religious views.

The peoples of the central Texas coast produced a diverse array of ceramic forms, including narrow-mouthed ollas, broad-mouthed jars, and bowls. These Rockport ceramics were ordinarily made from a sandy paste clay body and often decorated with black paint made from asphaltum, a naturally occurring tar produced from petroleum leaks in the Gulf of United mexican states. Motifs were either incised or painted near the rim of the vessel. Vessels treated with asphaltum and/or painted are called Rockport Black-on-Gray. These vessels have a grey skid and are painted with blackness asphaltum. Vessels with incised motifs are known as Rockport Incised. The two most dominant motifs are the horizontal line and chevron, which was sometimes cross-hatched.

I unusual Rockport Polychrome vessel was reconstructed from the Kirchmeyer site in Nueces County. It has red ochre and black asphaltum pain over a white skid. A wide variety of Rockport pottery motifs has been identified by archeologist Richard Weinstein based on the large collection of sherds recovered from the Guadalupe Bay site, a Karankawa campsite visited over hundreds of years. A gallery of Rockport pottery is provided in the TBH Guadalupe Bay showroom.

Artistry in Stone

Water jar likely traded into the Rio Grande Delta area from the Huasteca region of Tampico, Mexico. Note the offset looped handles to help in strapping the vessel to one's back with rope or cordage. The jar was found in pieces and has been glued back together. Much of the painted pattern has faded due to exposure to the winds and sand before the vessel pieces were discovered. TARL Collections.

Arcadian busy Rockport pottery vessels from central Texas declension. The top row and the pot on the middle left are ashaltum painted, while the other vessels are incised. All of the incised vessels and the top heart bottle are based on big sherds from Guadalupe Bay. CEI graphic.

In part because stone resources are express in the littoral prairies and marshes, rock was an infrequently used medium for creative expression. Nonetheless, there are a number of rock artifacts attesting to the range and skill of native craftsmen including gorgets, formalism knives, and pipes. Possibly the most stunning example is a unique formalism knife from an Early Archaic grave at Buckeye Knoll. Non only was it fabricated by a master craftsman from a previously unseen variegated chert, but its fluted and edge-ground stem resembles early on "fish-tail" Paleoindian projectile points known from Central America. How and when this unique item institute its way to the lower Guadalupe valley on the central Texas declension is unknown. Robert Ricklis believes that "Big Fish" probable served as a symbol of authority and that it was an heirloom piece passed downwards through many generations. Thus, this precious grave adept marked the elevated status of the interred.

The Buckeye Knoll cemetery also has examples of a rather elaborate ground rock manufacture that includes bannerstones, perforated plummets and elegantly shaped and polished quartzite grooved stones. The bannerstones and plummets are idea to reverberate all-encompassing interaction with cultures of the Southeastern U.S., where similar objects occur. The grooved quartzite (and sometimes hard limestone) stone artifacts are more common in the central coastal plain, suggesting local manufacture.

Similar to whelk shells, stone was also worked into gorgets. A slate gorget found in Kleberg County has three pause holes. Since slate is a non-local textile, this gorget was probably traded in from northern United mexican states. Other artistry is seen in carefully shaped and faceted quartzite plummets, some of which have been in grave contexts.

Torso Art

Tattoos and body paint are another facet of artistic, cultural, and ritual expression. Body ornamentation such as hair styles and piercings likewise fall under the category of body fine art. Most of our information apropos body art comes from 17th- and 18th-century accounts of European travelers and priests passing though the area. While the exact function of body art and ornamentation is nonetheless unclear, certain markings were probably used to align the person with a specific clan, ethnicity, or social rank. In other cases, body markings were applied before going into boxing or performing a specific ritual.

According to several accounts, tattoos and body paint were commonplace among the littoral natives. The Spaniards called the natives of the Rio Grande delta Borrados—which loosely translates to "those smeared with ink"—because of the predominance of body pigment and tattoos. In this region men tattooed their face, while women tattooed their face and torso. Co-ordinate to Gatschet'due south 1891 study, the Karankawa had face up markings consisting of "a small circumvolve of blue tattoo over either cheek, one horizontal line extending from the outer angle of the centre toward the ear, and three perpendicular parallel lines on the chin." Gatschet notes that Karankawa boys were tattooed in their tenth year equally a rite of passage. For the natives of the Prairies and Marshlands, the body was a canvas adorned with a variety of artistic expressions.

Artistic Expression was written past Barry Kidder, graduate pupil in the Department of Anthropology at Texas State University.

Sources

Aten, Lawrence, E.
1983Indians of the Upper Texas Declension. Academic Press, New York.

Gatschet, A.South.
1891The Karankawa Indians: The Coastal People of Texas. Archaeological and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum. Harvard Academy, Cambridge.
View manuscript online through The Portal to Texas History.

Ricklis, Robert A.
1996 The Karankawa Indians of Texas: An Ecological Report of Cultural Tradition and Change. University of Texas Press, Austin.

2004 The Archaeology of the Native American Occupation of Southeast Texas. In The Prehistory of Texas , edited by Timothy K. Perttula, pp. 181-202. Texas A&Grand University Press.

2004 Prehistoric Occupation of the Central and Lower Texas Coast: A Regional Overview. In The Prehistory of Texas, edited by Timothy K. Perttula, pp. 155-180. Texas A&Chiliad Academy Press.

Salinas, Mart�northward
1990Indians of the Rio Grande Delta: Their Function in the History of Southern Texas and Northeastern Mexico. University of Texas Printing.

Weinstein, Richard A.
1992 Archaeology and Paleogeography of the Lower Guadalupe River/San Antonio Bay Region: Cultural Resources Investigations Along the Channel to Victoria, Calhoun and Victoria Counties, Texas. Coastal Environments, Inc. Submitted to Galveston Commune, U.South. Regular army Corps of Engineers.

This ceremonial knife, dubbed the "Big Fish", found in an Early Archaic cemetery measures almost 12 inches long. This extremely skillfully made artifact is fashioned from a highly unusual chert textile of unknown source. Its fluted and edge-ground stem resembles early "fish-tail" Paleoindian projectile points known from Central America. How and when this unique item found its way to the lower Guadalupe valley on the primal Texas declension is unknown. Robert Ricklis believes that "Large Fish" was likely valued as a symbol of authority and that is was a heirloom piece that had been passed down through many generations. Artwork by Alexander Cox, from Ricklis 2007, courtesy U.S. Corps of Engineers, Galveston Division.

Polished rock gorget with drilled holes from site 41KL57 near the mouth of Baffin Bay. This artifact closely resembles gorgets found in the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys that are considered part of the Hopewell interaction sphere. TARL Archives.

A Karankawa man displays ornate tattooing and a shell necklace in a depiction past archeologist Frank Weir. Co-ordinate to 19th- century French traveler Albert Gatschet the motifs on the face identified the human every bit a Karankawa. Painting courtesy of Body of water Grant College Program, Texas A&M University.
Enlarge to see full scene.