For generations the Indigenous peoples of North America pursued copper sources and transmitted the skill of copper’s manipulation and preparation as a special material for use in elite goods on to their descendants. Elites at major political and religious centers during the Mississippian period used copper ornamentation as a sign of their status by crafting the sacred material into representations connected with the Chiefly Warrior cult of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. These elites used a trade network that spanned most of North America to acquire exotic trade items from far away, trading their own locally manufactured elite goods and materials.
After the collapse of the Mississippian way of life in the 1500s with the advent of European colonization, copper still retained a place in Native American religious life as a special material. Copper was traditionally regarded as sacred by many historic period Eastern tribes. Copper nuggets are included in among Great Lakes tribes. Among 19th century Muscogee Creeks, a group of copper plates carried along the Trail of Tears are regarded as some of the tribe's most sacred items.
After the flat sheets of copper were produced, designs were then embossed into the surfaces probably with stone, bone or wooden tools. Frank Hamilton Cushing, an anthropologist working in the early 20th century, worked out a method for flattening and embossing the plates. He hammered raw nuggets of copper smooth and removed imperfections by scouring the surface with a piece of sandstone. He was then able to duplicate the avian designs by resting the sheet of copper on a rawhide pad and pressing into the surface using a piece of pointed deer antler and pressing with his chest. This produced a sharp thin line that when the plate was reversed resembled the embossed lines of the aboriginal artifacts. This process is considered to be roughly similar to how Mississippian coppersmiths probably worked.
Avian imagery occupied a central place in Cahokian iconography, with examples including an incised sandstone tablet with a birdman excavated from Monks Mound and an elaborate elite personage burial in Mound 72 with thousands of shell beads arranged in the shape of a bird.
Although no copper plates other than some small fragments have ever been found at Cahokia, it is the only Mississippian culture site to date where a copper workshop has been located by archaeologists. Excavations of the copper workshops at Mound 34, (a small mound located on the Ramey Plaza east of Monks Mound) indicate copper was worked there. The area contains the remains of three tree stumps thought to have been used to hold anvil stones used for beating out the flattened sheets of copper. However, despite the lack of copper plates, one copper artifact has been found at the site. A wooden copper covered mace by thought to have been part of a headdress was found during surface collections at the site. Several other copper ornaments have been found in nearby locations.
A copper plate found at the Clay Hill Site (3 LE 11) in Lee County, Arkansas has the same chest region design and long narrow shape and distinctive tail feathers as the Scott Site and Rose Mound examples. Although fragmented it is approximately in length. It was recorded to be in a private collection in 1978 but has not been seen since. The plate was found in an Armorel Phase burial that also contained a Clarksdale bell, an item of European manufacture that is a hallmark of the 1541 Hernando de Soto excursion through the southeast. This does not date the era for the production of the plate though as such items were often kept as heirlooms for long periods, even many generations, before they ended up becoming grave goods.
In 1910 Clarence Bloomfield Moore found a stylized hawk or eagle plate while excavating graves at the Rose Mound Site (3 CS 27) in Cross County, Arkansas. The plate was and remarkably well preserved, missing only the tip of one wing. The plate is not embossed but merely a shape cut from a flat copper sheet.
In the 1970s a copper bird in length was found by looters at the Scott Site (3 MS 24), also known as Big Lake Bridge, in Mississippi County, Arkansas. The specimen was located at the back of the head of an extended adult burial, and may have been bent over the top of the head. Eight plain pottery vessels grave good vessels were found with it.
A possible partial avian style plate was found at the Magness Site (3 IN 8) in Independence County, Arkansas along with several engraved shell cups. The plate is a typical head portion with the forked eye, earspool, and elaborate headdress and hairdo known from other examples. As the lower portion of the plate is missing it is impossible to tell if the figure is a dancer or a human headed bird like the Wulfing A plate.
A avian themed plate very similar to the Wulfing Plates copper plate was discovered at the Toul Creek Site in Baxter County, Arkansas by several local farmers. The plate was located in the chest area of an extended adult who was also wearing the two limestone ear spools. Other grave goods found in the burial included a marine shell dipper and a chert knife. Its whereabouts are currently unknown.
Further east and south into Florida were non-Mississippian culture peoples who were involved in long distance trade of local high status items such as busycon shells for gorgets and yaupon holly for the black drink. The Mill Cove Complex is a St. Johns culture site in Duval County, Florida with two sand burial mounds, one platform mound shaped and associated village habitation areas. Clarence Bloomfield Moore excavated the mounds in 1894 and found numerous copper grave goods, including two copper and 11 copper plates. The one plate found in the Shields Mound was plain, but several of the other 10 found in the Grant Mound were decorated with an oval central boss and ringed with an oval embossed or beaded line. They measured - to -. They had perforated holes for hanging. Archaeologists speculate they were used either for gorgets or headdress ornaments. Analysis of the metal in the plaques has connected them to locations in the Great Lakes region, Wisconsin and the Appalachian Mountains.
A little further down the Atlantic coast was the Mount Royal Mound (8 PU 35), a site occupied on and off since 12,000 BCE, and during the historic period a Timucua and Apalachee settlement. During the Mississippian era, construction on the mounds began in approximately 1050 CE.Alvers and Mahaffey. Mount Royal Indian Mound copper&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESh51oqD_dCRRw5anufoWzt2OcXFlauHQDMi11ezVV6QzD_z0r_68F_DdK0MuvvqobC_zExYlWNpfVgk16CWY1Xt9RqBvjiebuBFg9War0FTLBTzjf2_vaNIsrm4o_M05G-1kMBE&sig=AHIEtbS2c8d3j4JQMvRzaH8woVkjvwTc0Q "A Chronology of Mount Royal." (retrieved 21 Oct 2011) In 1894, Clarence B. Moore excavated a major mound at the site. Among the copper ornaments he disinterred, Moore discovered a copper breast-place with an abstract geometric pattern of hour-glass shapes of parallel lines arranged in a fylfot pattern around a circle with eight concentric rings. "Projects: Mount Royal Indian Mound." Florida Division of Historical Resources. (retrieved 21 Oct 2011)
Located in central Florida, the Old Okahumpka Site (8 LA 57) is a now destroyed burial mound in Lake County, Florida near the modern town of Okahumpka. The site was excavated by Clarence B. Moore in the 1890s. During his excavation he found a burial associated plate measuring wide by in length and depicting the lower portion of a dancing figure wearing a sash, kilt, cuffed , and holding a knife. The design is almost identical to two examples known from Spiro and a site in Jackson County, Alabama, although of the three it is the only one to show a figure wielding a knife. Archaeologists estimate the plate was deposited in the mound sometime between 1100 and 1300 CE. The plate is now part of the collection of the National Museum of the American Indian.
From an unknown location on the west coast of central Florida comes the Wilcox plate, a partial avian themed copper plate showing the middle section details of scalloped wings, tail feathers and a raptors leg and claw in the Malden style very similar to the Wulfing plates. It was discovered somewhere near Waldo, Florida in Levy County in the 1880s, where it was purchased from a local doctor by Joseph Wilcox for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. It has been part of the collection of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology since the mid-1930s.
The Edwards falcon plate is a by copper avian plate found at the Material Service Quarry Site in La Salle County, Illinois. Before it was deposited as a grave good it had its head riveted on in the reverse position. It is one of several plates found in Illinois believed to have been made by the same workshop as the Malden plates.
The Peoria Falcon is a unique avian plate found in 1856 on the shore of Peoria Lake. It is a by copper plate depicting a naturalistic peregrine falcon. It is part of the collection of the National Museum of Natural History, but it is on long term loan to the Lakeview Museum of Arts and Sciences in Peoria, Illinois where it is on display.
The Upper Bluff Lake plates are two plates found at the Saddle Site (11U284) in Union County, Illinois in the 1880s, in the same stone box grave. One of the plates is avian themed and the other a unique double birdman design, but still within the corpus of the S.E.C.C. The Upper Bluff Lake falcon plate is a by avian themed Wulfing style plate. It has a mostly intact tail, which the Malden plates do not, and has helped archaeologists understand what the tails of the other pieces would have looked like. The Dancing Figures plate is a rectangular by plate depicting two Birdman figures holding ceremonial chipped flint maces, possibly dancing, and shielding themselves from a possible liquid or ropelike motif falling from the top center of the plate. Stylistically the Dancers plate has been linked to the Classic Braden style associated with Cahokia and it bears stylistic similarities to Craig A style shell objects found at the Spiro site. ξ5 Both the plates date from 1100 to 1300 CE. Both of the Upper Bluff Lake plates are now in the collection of the National Museum of Natural History.
The eight plates are designated Plates A-H. Plate A, the only anthropomorphic human headed avian in the Wulfing cache, measures in length by in width and weighs .
Many similar plates found in other states are now believed to have come from the same workshop, if not the same artist, as the Wulfing cache. The sites of the discovery of these other plates span the United States from central Florida to northern Illinois to Oklahoma, and include the Upper Bluff Lake falcon plate, the Toul Creek plate, the Reed Mound plate, the Edwards plate, and the Wilcox plate, as well as showing stylistic links to plates found in burials at Etowah and Spiro.
Two plates were found in a Plaquemine culture site in Mississippi. Three fragments of a repoussé plate with an avian design were found in a burial in the Mangum Mound Site in Claiborne County, Mississippi in 1936 by a farmer who owned the site. When pieced together the plate was about in width and weighed a total of . The plate had been reinforced and riveted in several places to protect weak spots in the metal. A second plate was found during archaeological excavations at the site in 1963. ξ8 The Mangum plates stylistically resemble the Rogan plates from Etowah. ξ1
==Gallery==
Other themes
Known locations
Arkansas plates
Etowah and the Rogan plates
Florida plates
Illinois plates
Malden plates or the Wulfing cache
Spiro plates
Other locations
Other copper items
See also
Notes
External links
References
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