A Double Engraved Face Mask
During the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex in North America, AD 1000-1700, the native people manufactured many ornaments from marine conch and whelk shells. These included ear pins, beads, lip plugs and gorgets. Within the gorget category, most of the shell was plain or not engraved but many were engraved with various motifs including rattlesnakes, spiders, dancing humans, turkeys, woodpeckers and human faces. Almost all of these engraved gorgets had the incising done on the concave side of the shell but the human face engraving was usually done on the convex or what was the original outside surface of the mollusk. A very few of these face masks, though, had this etching done of both sides such as on this rare double engraved face mask.
Shell face masks are normally elongated pear shaped objects and were most likely made to actually represent human faces. They almost always have two suspension holes drilled near the top which were probably used to simulate eyes. But these suspension holes normally do not show any wear as would be present if the gorget were suspended around a person’s neck. It is believed that many face mask gorgets were made as funerary ornaments, hence the commonly used name – death masks. Scientific excavations have shown that in burial situations the face masks, if present, were usually placed on the deceased individual’s chest rather than the head and no one has successfully explained this phenomenon.
These masks have been found in sizes from miniature two inch long examples to large ones more than ten inches in length with the average size being in the four-five inch range. In the simplest form, the face mask has only the two drilled “eye” holes. Many, though, also show a human nose and mouth that, when present, are normally in bas-relief after the shell surrounding these facial features was ground away. The upper edge of the mask often has incised lines in many styles and apparently made to illustrate the hair line or headdress. Some of these masks also include various facial engravings including scribed circles around the eye holes and lines around the eyes that flow down the body of the face. This type of engraving is normally called the “weeping eye” motif from the belief, by early archaeologist, that they symbolize tears flowing from the mask’s eyes. Today, there is no consensus among scholars and collectors as to just what these engravings represent but most seem to believe that the “weeping eye” motif is a symbol of warfare. Face mask gorgets have been found throughout the region occupied by the natives during the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex Period. That area encompasses almost all the territory fronted by the Lower Atlantic and Gulf coasts and extends into the present inland states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma and even further north into the Ohio Valley. The majority, though, seem to have been made in the area that, today, includes the states of Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia and Arkansas.
The face mask pictured with this article is 2 ¾ inches tall by 2 3/16” wide and was plowed field surface find in Russell County, Virginia. It was probably made in the AD 1500-1700 time period and has the usual drilled “eyes” and an engraved hairline and the more unusual “weeping eye” incising on the convex side. It does not, though, have a raised nose and mouth which is very odd but can be explained by looking at the back or concave side of the gorget where can be plainly seen more engraved lines and drilled pits. Why was this done? Madeline Kneberg, in her ground-breaking treatise on shell gorgets, did mention a face mask that had been cut from a broken piece of a scalloped triskele gorget. Since the extra inscribed lines on this gorget are on the concave side, it can be surmised that it was made of a broken circular gorget that was originally engraved, in some unknown motif, on the incurved surface. This would also account for the relatively small size of the face mask and more importantly explain why there is no raised mouth or nose present since the convex surface of the original gorget would have been ground and polished smooth overall. In the accompanying photo, one can easily see that these concave surface lines end abruptly along the edges by ancient grinding and smoothing of the edges. This is the only face mask personally seen by this writer that has engravings on both surfaces but other collectors have stated that they have seen a very few specimens with this enigma. It is unfortunate that the original gorget was damaged but it is fortunate that some craftsman, 300-500 years ago, decided to make the broken shell usable again and thus created this Double Engraved Face Mask.
REFERENCES:
Brain, Jeffery P. & Phillip Phillips
SHELL GORGETS-STYLES OF THE LATE PREHISTORIC AND
PROTOHISTORIC SOUTHEAST
1996
Funderburk, Emma L & Mary D. Foreman
SUN CIRCLES AND HUMAN HANDS
1957
Galloway, Patricia, Editor
THE SOUTHEASTERN CEREMONIAL COMPLEX:
ARTIFACTS ANDANALYSIS
1989
Kneberg, Madeline
“Engraved Shell Gorgets and Their Associations”,
TENNESSEE ARCHAEOLOGIST, Vol. 15, pages 1-40
1959
Maus, James E.
“An Unusual Virginia Shell Face Mask Gorget”,
CENTRAL STATESARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL, Vol. 42, No. 4
1995
Muller, Jon. D.
“Archaeological Analysis of Art Styles”,
TENNESSEE ARCHAEOLOGIST Vol. 22, pages 25-29
1966