(…from American Antiquity, Vol. 30, No. 1, 1964)
 

A  CURIOUS  SCRATCHED  DESIGN
ON  A  CONNECTICUT  PAINTSTONE

Bernard W. Powell

Abstract

 

      Nonceramic designs are rarely described from southern New England.  One is here illustrated and its elements examined.  Several controlled speculations as to its meaning are advanced.  These include attenuated Southern Cult motifs, depicted natural-history phenomena, and the possibility of its being a map or a record of some cultural event.  No conclusions are drawn.  Re-examination of similar artifacts in local collections may reveal additional scratched designs.
 

A TABULAR PIECE of hematite which bears a rather complex, lightly scratched design (Fig. 1) occurs as part of the inventory at the Spruce Swamp site still under study by me at Norwalk, Fairfield County, Connecticut.  Since such items are not commonly described from southern coastal New England, a description with suggested interpretations of the design's "meaning" seems warranted.

      Ted Jostrand of Norwalk found the artifact in freshly bulldozed ground over a coastal shell midden.  Much of this midden, which is on the northern shore of Long Island Sound, is presently drowned.  Exact provenience data are wanting, but the finder's recollection is that the item was not at the surface but several inches down in the midden. Woodland manifestations are evidenced by ceramics at this site, and there is some suggestion of a preceramic horizon.
 
 

             The design may be described as several concentric circles enclosing a V at the center.  Close inspection shows that the third circular element from the bottom edge (orientation of seen in Fig. 1 is assumed) deliberately closes with the second circle at both ends, thus giving only four complete circles.  Furthermore, each circle was apparently done in arcs (usually three) rather than in one continuous line.  This may indicate that the maker shifted his piece, his scratching tool, or both, several times. There is a series of zigzag lines between the second and third circles.  Opposite the open end of the central V are a number of short straight lines crossing the second circle from the center. Similar short lines occur along the periphery of the stone from its upper right edge (as oriented) to its lower left edge (with near obliteration in the vicinity of the abrading facet). Several more or less random scratches cross the basic design.

      What does all this mean?  Several interpretations are here suggested, but some assumptions must be stated: (1) the design is understandable in rational terms or concepts (though not necessarily any of the interpretations in this paper); (2) the design is not purely an idiosyncratic creation or "doodle" of a private intellect; (3) the design has (or at one time had) symbolic and universal or intrapersonal meaning to members of some unknown group.

      As the object's cultural and temporal positions are unknown, I begin by casting backward in time and outward in space for possible correspondences. No clan, totemic, or other designs of the historic northeastern Algonquin known to me suggest any relationship.  What does strike me are several curious parallels in general appearance and in specific elements to designs of the Southern Death Cult, particularly to the well-known serpent motif of the Cult.
 

       The other specimens illustrate further variations of some magnitude. Note also how the elements in the southern specimens often make the design asymmetric, and how the short cross-lines in the Connecticut specimen similarly give an asymmetric aspect to the design.  Finally, the central V of the Connecticut specimen suggests a stylized variant of the serpent's mouth (also usually open to the right in Cult depictions) or (less likely) some kind of variant of the forked or weeping-eye motif common in the center of engraved serpent gorgets of the Southern Cult.

      This interpretation accounts for all elements of the design except the short cross-lines along the right edge of the stone.  If these are outside the basic design, then I may satisfy my first criterion. That these lines may not relate to the basic design is possible since they are reminiscent of similar lines and notches along the peripheries of artifacts in the Northeast, notably bannerstones and certain problematical artifacts. Such marks are sometimes called "tally marks." This possibility is not overlooked here - with the added caution that "tally mark" may be a semantic trap (that is, it is called a tally mark, hence it is a tally mark).

      This Southern Cult interpretation, however, does not meet the second criterion(logical placement within geographical and cultural contexts) very well. No very convincing argument can yet be advanced to explain how Southern Cult motifs reached Connecticut.  A fact possibly of some interest and significance is that a partially worked green siliceous stone from the midden has been identified by a mineralogist (David M. Seaman, personal communication) as plasma whose "nearest locality is probably in Georgia or Alabama."  Perhaps the best that can be done is to note that some investigators have stated in a general way that the Southern Death Cult in a "very diluted form" is found even in some of the northern areas of eastern North America (Martin and others 1947: 238).  Another drawback is that Cult items in the South are usually valued objects with carefully executed designs, whereas the Connecticut design is indifferently rendered upon an apparently utilitarian piece of stone.

      A second interpretation utilizes some Cult symbolism, but in a profane rather than sacred sense.  If we assume that the concentric circles represent a sun symbol and that the zigzag lines represent lightning rather than the serpent (Fundaburk and Foreman 1957, Pl. 40), we might then have the sun with lightning on either side and the short cross-lines below as falling rain (not a Cult symbol insofar as I am aware) or perhaps even crepuscular rays.  Thus a storm or meteorological event may be recorded. This interpretation assumes that the artifact is a pictograph representing solitary or unique events and not a stylized religious symbol.  Ina sense, this kind of explanation apparently satisfies my initial criteria.

      An extension of the recorded, natural-phenomena interpretation is an astronomical one.  The sun is represented by concentric circles and the zigzag lines may be radiated light (Fundaburk and Foreman 1957, PI. 40). But now something is wrong with the sun.  The short crosslines to one side may represent a shadow or something blotting out the sun's light; they may represent the teeth of something biting or devouring the sun. Perhaps a solar eclipse is recorded.  This astronomical interpretation, similar to the preceding meteorological one, may meet the criteria of relevancy only in a very general way.

      Another explanation I call the "local map solution" - if the cultural implication is not too extreme.  The central V is seen as a Woodland type conical house; the zigzag line as a row of lesser such houses; and the short cross-lines and the lines along the periphery (barring "tally marks") as marsh reeds. The vicinity of the site includes a low hill near a coastal marsh. The central V is on the highest point of the stone, the top of the "hill”. Is this a "village"?  Jostrand has recovered artifacts on and near the base of the hill.  If something more than a "map" was intended, note that the third curved line closing with the second on both ends suggests a "boat" or "canoe." Now the short lines are all just above the "boat."  Are they "arrows"?  Is the "village" under attack?  The local map solution fails to account for the prominent concentric circles, but may, with some leeway, satisfy our criteria.

      Perhaps this is all (indeed, much more!) than should legitimately be put forth regarding this piece.  However, at the least, it does call for a critical re-examination of hematite paintstones in collections from this and contiguous areas with a view to checking very closely for presence of faint, but so far undetected, scratched designs.  Further description and interpretation might bring to light a little-suspected aspect of Northeastern archaeology*.

           Acknowledgment.  I am indebted to David M. Seaman of the Department of Mineralogy, American Museum of Natural History, New York, for the cited mineral identification.

References

1957 Sun Circles and Human Hands: The Southeastern Indian's  Art and Industry.  Fundaburk, Emma Lila, and Mary Douglas Foreman (Editors). Luverne.

1947 Indians before Columbus. Martin, Paul S., George I. Quimby, and Donald Collier. The University Of Chicago Press, Chicago.

* I would like to add a post-publication note to this paper, relying at this date largely on memory.  Some time after it appeared, it drew the attention of Alexander Marshack, the prominent European Paleolithic archaeologist with the Sorbonne in Paris.  Marshack is author of the sometimes controversial notion that early men of the Aurignacian and Cro-Magnon times in the European caves were advanced mathematicians and geometers millennia before the Summarians, Babylonians, Egyptians and others who usually get this credit.  Marshack studied engraved bone pieces from the European caves and has been able to demonstrate to his own and many others’ satisfaction that they were (incredibly!) rows of tally marks and dots done so precisely that adjacent pieces could be slid alongside one another in a fashion analogous to vernier scales (!)  to yield interpolative calendar dates and other data. This has to do with advanced calendric notions that men of the Stone Age had developed concerning phases of the Moon.  (Knowledge of the Moon and its various phases and “irregularly” regular cycles, is held by many anthropologists to be a sine qua non in hunting - particularly nocturnal hunting - cultures…).

         I believe Marshack also finds a weather notation system in the enigmatic Upper Paleolithic markings.  At his request, I secured the CT specimen for him for extended analysis.  He ultimately advised me that he had found evidences here quite suggestive of these same cultural notions of a (combined) calendric and weather notation device - the only such New World specimen ever to come to his attention.  (One of the more intriguing aspects of  Marshack’s analytical method is exhaustive study of the faint scratches with optical microscopes.  This reveals the sometimes astonishing fact that apparently different tools (scratchers or gravers) were alternately used at different intervals to make “runs” of marks on the items, and that furthermore these tools appear to have been wielded by a number of different operators!)

         He has published major reports on his hypothesis in the journal Science and elsewhere, and has at least one semi-popular book on the subject I believe.  The “sequences” of these “tally marks” are often shown by him in colored overlays or separations - and he did this for the CT specimen- all of which he confided to me by personal letter some years ago, and which document is among my personal papers now in storage.  I don’t think I have ever published this before or made other reference to it in print, but feel it should be recorded here at this time.  The whereabouts of this interesting specimen are unfortunately not known to me at this time: if it could be found it ought to be housed somewhere in a reputable museum.  Jostrand (the finder) died some years back, and I do not know the disposition of his once extensive collection of CT relics. His widow now lives in VT, but I have not heard from her in some time…
 
 

-End-