Merry Christmas and a few favorites from 2009

[Hippy]

I just wanted to wish everyone and their families a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. May your stockings be stuffed with relics and your dreams not be visions of sugar plums but of fine axes (I love axes, LOL).

I've also attached a few pictures of some of my favorite acquisitions of 2009. The axe is a classic Iowa Square from Decatur County, Iowa measuring 7" in length. The pipe is a Hopewell Platform pipe found by Glenn Weller in Jersey County, Illinois. It measures a little over 3" long and the material is subject to debate. I believe it's catlinite while others say red Illinois pipestone or other materials. The pair of Daltons were found in the same farm field near Modena in Stark County, Illinois. They are made of Moline chert and are the finest daltons I have seen made of this material. Daltons of any sort are very scarcely made of Moline Chert. They measure around 5" long.

Merry Christmas,
Hippy

 

[Mooch]

Some great looking pieces there Hippy. The axe is a killer and those two daltons are killer. I just got back from buying a collection from Southern Illinois. a really nice quartz banner in the group. I've got 3 or 4 broken platforms out of this material that I'll bring to show you sometime. Hope all is well, Mitch

 

[pickaway]

Wow some museum quality artifacts, thanks for the look...

 

[DigginThePast]

Great pieces.

Merry Christmas Hippy.

 

[Neanderthal]

Fantastic artifacts Hippy. That pipe is out of this world, I love that. I would almost be willing to bet that the material on it is a flint clay or "fire clay". It comes from eastern MO, western Illinois and was a preferred material for many artisans. Big boy pipe from Spiro is made of it, and so is the Deisha "Corn Goddess" from Arkansas. Both "Big Boy" (resting warrior) and the corn goddess were probably made up around the Cahokia area as statues and then the holes were added later to fashion as pipes. Fire Clay is a red stone that looks very much like catlinite, but seems to be utilized more around the Cahokia and Illinois areas. Now that I think of it, it's very probable that the "McAdams" Hopewell bird pipe from southern Ill. was made from the same material. Here's a link to a pic that I took of the McAdams pipe, for comparison. http://www.arrowheads1.com/images/museumstuff/birdpipe.jpg

Great relics, thanks for showing!

 

[Adena_man]

Awesome! Love that pipe!

 

[Tnmountains]

Nice. The Daltons are fantastic. Merry Christmas to you as well

 

[Hippy]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

 

[creekhunter]

I can see why they are your favorites!

 

[SoIll]

I love that pipe.
Thanks Neanderthal for the info on fire clay.
My buddy found a broke pipe he thought was catlinite so I showed him this post.

 

[Hippy]

Fantastic artifacts Hippy. That pipe is out of this world, I love that. I would almost be willing to bet that the material on it is a flint clay or "fire clay". It comes from eastern MO, western Illinois and was a preferred material for many artisans. Big boy pipe from Spiro is made of it, and so is the Deisha "Corn Goddess" from Arkansas. Both "Big Boy" (resting warrior) and the corn goddess were probably made up around the Cahokia area as statues and then the holes were added later to fashion as pipes. Fire Clay is a red stone that looks very much like catlinite, but seems to be utilized more around the Cahokia and Illinois areas. Now that I think of it, it's very probable that the "McAdams" Hopewell bird pipe from southern Ill. was made from the same material. Here's a link to a pic that I took of the McAdams pipe, for comparison. http://www.arrowheads1.com/images/museumstuff/birdpipe.jpg

Great relics, thanks for showing!

Hmmm, that's an interesting idea and I would definitely agree that the McAdams pipe is made from the same material. I've seen the McAdams pipe a couple of times while Kent had it but never put two and two together until I looked at the picture again. I know Ken Farnsworth looked at this pipe and McAdams and didn't think they were catlinite or Illinois pipestone.

I have to admit that I haven’t looked a lot of flint clay at any length so I did pull out some old books and magazines and looked at more pictures. Most of the Mississippian figurines made of flint clay seem to be a bit darker maroon colored with brown colored spots. The material also seems to be quite porous compared to this material. The flint clay almost resembles the colors in the Titterington Owl which is a dark maroon or almost purple. The Titterington owl also may be Baraboo pipestone from Wisconsin because it also looks similar.

I also checked out some pipes that are considered catlinite and they do have some similarities on color. If you have “Legends of Prehistoric Art” on inside of the back cover are two huge disk pipes from Arkansas. The colors in those pipes are very similar to the colors in mine. Unfortunately I didn’t get the chance to talk to Farnsworth while he was looking at the pipe and didn’t find out if he tried the spectrometer on it or not. I know the Illinois archies are very interested in finding the sources of material for Hopewell pipes so I’m going to try to stay up to speed on their research.

Thanks for the ideas and it definitely piqued my interest.

Hippy