THE TITTERINGTON PIPE AND OTHER ILLINOIS PIPESTONE ARTIFACTS |
Doug Miller |
There is little doubt that the Middle Woodland people were some of the finest artisans in
the Americas. Their sphere of influence covered most of the Midwest region and included trade routes extending
northward to the Canadian border, southward to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to the Rocky Mountain range in Wyoming,
and eastward to the Atlantic coastal region. Many exotic materials became high status and perhaps religious symbols
during this cultural explosion. Materials such as obsidian, copper, mica, marine shells and flint-clay (pipestone)
were traded great distances throughout this Midwestern empire.
Some of the finest works of art by these prehistoric people were made of pipestone. Fairly soft and easy to work, this material lends itself to making fine, decoratively carved objects such as the beautiful platform pipe on our cover. It was made from Illinois pipestone and was found at the Knight Site in Hamburg Township in Calhoun County, Illinois. Its pleasantly curving lines and fine detail make this pipe one of the finest, if not the finest of its kind. The engraving of the feathers and detail work on the head testify to the skill the artisan had in creating this unique owl effigy platform pipe. Many pipestone artifacts have been found throughout the Midwest over the years. Because of the few known sources of such flint-clays, one being the Scioto source in central Ohio, all green and tan pipestone materials were assumed to have come from that source. Based on that assumption, it was concluded that there was a large trade area attributed to the Ohio material. Recent discoveries in northern Illinois have changed the way archaeologists are now looking at the overall picture.
Top: fragmentary pick bannerstone, loafstone bi-faced and a prismoidal bannerstone, all found in
Whiteside County, Illinois.
For years, collectors in Illinois, including me, have been finding artifacts made from a green pipestone which most thought to be the Ohio stone. However, what I was finding on many Woodland and a few Archaic sites were cobbles of unaltered pipestone and work-altered debris left behind during the manufacture of pipestone artifacts. It seemed strange to me to find the raw material so far from its source in Ohio. This led me and several other interested people to wonder if we did not have a source closer to home here in northern Illinois. I kept exact records and put together distribution maps of what I was finding.
This question about a local source also intrigued some in the professional field as well. Dr. Tom Berres was the first professional archaeologist to show an interest in my material samples and distribution maps. At the time, Berres was doing work for the Illinois Department of Transportation, field surveying a site in Whiteside County, Illinois, along the Route 2 construction area. He had contacted me to see if I had information about sites that might be impacted by the construction, which led to our discussion about what we were finding in our area. His office was at the University of Illinois in Champaign.
Broken tube pipe preform and a tube pipe from Whiteside County, Illinois.
The only way a source other than Ohio could be proven was to have the Ohio and suspected Illinois materials tested by using a laboratory technique called X-Ray Diffraction (XRD). Through Berres' connections at the University of Illinois, the materials and equipment and experts were assembled. Dr. Randy Hughes and Dr. Dewey Moore analyzed the XRD data. They determined that there was a source other than Ohio producing the pipestone found in northwest Illinois.
© 1990 C.S.A.S.I. Last modified:
January 31 2004