A Mace Effigy Bowl
It is a type of pressurized tear gas that law enforcement carries and all women should carry. It is a cooking spice made from the nutmeg fruit seed. It was a club like weapon made of iron and used to break the opponent’s armor. It was a ceremonial staff or scepter carried before or by certain officials as a symbol of office. And it was named from the Medieval Latin word “macis”. It is mace!
In 1945 two men, Antonio Waring and Preston Holder, coined the name Southeastern Ceremonial Complex to identify the chiefdom level of social and ceremonial complexity that began about a thousand years ago. This contrived polity was based on cosmology and supernatural beings as described by the social elite from about AD 1000 to 1500 until internal warfare and political turmoil began destroying the societies and after that, around AD 1700, the destruction was completed by the contact with smallpox and measles from the European invaders. In a material sense, this social entity used difficult to obtain elements such as marine shell, mountain mica, native copper and rare lithic minerals to produce stylized exotic items for the purpose of establishing supreme control over the common population. These stylizations included the bi-lobed arrow, the hand and eye motif, the ogee symbol, the forked eye, the petaloid and the mace, though these names are in today’s language since we do not know what the natives called these abstract emblems.
The Mississippian Period or SECC mace, as described by early archaeologists, was a chipped or ground stone war club used the societal leaders as a symbol of pre-ordained and ancestral power but that is only guesswork since we do not know exactly how these weapon-like tools were used. These objects were called maces because they reminded the early collectors of the flails and maces carried by medieval European knights and warriors. In stone, the mace artifacts are exceedingly rare with possibly fewer than fifty examples known to exist but they were probably also made of wood, in considerable numbers, which certainly would have not survived the intervening centuries. The Amerinds, especially in the Mississippi River Valley, also occasionally used this mace symbol on pottery vessels some of which have survived into modern times.
The bowl pictured with this article would probably have been made in the AD 1400 to 1700 time period and was found on the Soudan Site, near the town of Soudan, in Lee County, Arkansas. It is 7 3/8 inches from the bowl edge to the outside edge of the mace symbol and is exactly five inches to the top of the mace. The entire interior and the exterior down about an inch from the rim are coated with now much worn red paint slip called Old Town Red. The mace effigy, itself, is 2 3/8 inches high by 1 ¼ inches wide and about ½ inch thick near its base. It has seven punctated tally marks on each edge, one drilled or punched hole in the center and four cut lines in the cardinal directions – north, south, east and west. Mace effigy vessels are quite rare and if they were only used by the most powerful members of the societies, they should be quite rare. It is theorized today that the SECC mace symbol was one of warfare especially when combined with the four cardinal directions or cross in circle motifs. It is also theorized that only the society leaders, shamans and bravest warriors could associate in any way with the mace symbol and that bowls such as this one would have been used only by these few individuals for food and drink or some unknown religious/ceremonial purpose. So was it last used maybe five hundred years ago by some priest in a spiritual ceremony? Or were corn and beans served in this bowl to a society ruler? Or did some great warrior use it for a last drink of cool water before going off to battle? When was it used? How was it used? For whom was it used? Interesting questions with no answers but at least I can hold and study and speculate about the ancient service of this Mace Effigy Bowl.
REFERENCES:
Hall, Robert L.
AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE SOUL: NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN BELIEF AND RITUAL
1997
Muller, Jon
“The Southern Cult”,
SOUTHEASTERN CEREMONIAL COMPLEX: ARTIFACTS AND ANALYSIS
1989
Power, Susan
EARLY ART OF THE SOUTHEASTERN INDIANS
2004
Reilly, Kent F. & James Garber
ANCIENT OBJECTS AND SACRED REALMS
2007
Townsend, Robert F, Editor
HERO, HAWK AND OPEN HAND
2004
Waring, Antonio J.
THE WARING PAPERS
1968