A Lady and Her Basket

A Lady and Her Basket

Jim Maus

Advance, North Carolina

The attempt to analyze and interpret many religious/ceremonial artifacts of the Mississippian Period is a difficult task. The ideas that the native artisan had in creating an object will never be known, much less understood, but we can certainly empathize with the emotions of the potter who made this very rare duo ¨C A Lady and Her Basket. The Indians of the Temple Mound Culture in the Mississippi River Valley made many types of pottery vessels, most of which were obviously of ordinary utilitarian use for preparing and consuming their meals and for storage of foodstuffs. Some, though, were equally obviously made for some ceremonial purpose. A waterbottle made as an effigy of a plant or animal or human would certainly have functioned as a water container but why would the maker spend the extra time and energy if it was only a holder of liquid. For belief in the supernatural! For fear of the unknown! For knowledge of the natural World! Or for love of a fellow human being!.

This hooded human effigy bottle, discovered on the Campbell Site, Pemiscot County, Missouri, is a miniature since it is only three and one half inches tall. Human effigy bottles are rare but within this pottery type there are certain traits that are considered ordinary. This bottle has some of these characteristics, namely that the effigy is in the kneeling position with the legs and feet tucked under the body and it has a well modeled head with eyes, nose, mouth, ears with ornaments and an elaborate hairline. After these qualities, though, the vessel becomes more unordinary with the following traits. It is a miniature which is rare since most human effigies fall within the six to nine inches tall range. It is also more rare with the arms folded across the abdomen which is theorized to be a sign of pregnancy or fertility and because the face is tilted upward to the sky.

The Rhodes Incised bowl, found with the human effigy, is also not ordinary because it is a miniature and because most vessels of this pottery design are bottles or jars. Incising of pottery was a technique of altering the surface of the green or un-fired ceramics. Using this method, the potter could cut fine, close and deep line incisions in the semidry clay. In Rhodes Incised vessels, the decoration took the form of spiraling lines, triskeles and swastikas. This two and one-eighth inch diameter by threequarters of an inch high bowl has four sets of spirals inside and on the bottom of the artifact.

These two items are rare in their own right but since they were found together it suggests the bowl represented the birthing basket for the pregnant female who is looking skyward perhaps for guidance and assistance from a supreme being. Were these two artifacts made as fertility symbols to wish for an easy birth? Or were they made to assist a mother who died in childbirth into the afterlife? Or were they simply playthings for a child? I will never know the thoughts of the craftsperson who made these vessels, but I am confident that they were made with adoration for A Lady and Her Basket.

REFERENCES:
1957 Fundaburk, Emma L. and Mary D. Foreman

Sun Circles and Human Hands

1952 Griffin, James B.

Archaeology of the Eastern United States

1976 Hathcock, Roy

Ancient Indian Pottery of the Mississippi River Valley

1994 O'Brien, Michael J.

Cat Monsters and Head Pots