A Rare Urn and Cover
As the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (AD 1000-1500) began to decline, a unique phenomenon came into being in the portions of Alabama – the use of earthenware vessels as interment containers for infants and small children. This event was named the Burial Urn Culture in the early twentieth century but the name of this circa AD 1500-1700 period occurrence is now known as the Alabama River Phase.
The shapes of these funerary vessels vary from deep conical base pots to wide and shallow casuela bowls which are flattened globular receptacles with incurvate rims and angular shoulders. These burial urns were most probably used as everyday cooking cauldrons or as food storage jars until needed for funerals but the covers could have been made specifically to fit the bases. Generally there are two sub-divisions of the vessels categorized by the ceramic tempering medium. The Alabama River aspect is shell tempered and the Wilcox Phase has grit tempering. Aside from that, the two types are essentially identical. The urns and covers were occasionally engraved with motifs of the Southern Cult in a simplified style that seems to be directly descended from the more ancient Moundville ornamentations (circa AD 1200-1500).
This particular urn and cover was recovered in an archaeological salvage operation in November 1975 from a site near the Tallapossa River in Macon County, Alabama almost from underneath the tracks of a site destroying bulldozer. The casuela urn is 14 1/8 inches in orifice diameter by 5 ½ inches deep and is gray fire cloud marked and grit tempered Wilcox Phase pottery. It was retrieved intact though it has some restored pressure cracks due to soil expansion and contraction during the several hundred years it was buried. The cover is 14 ¾ inches in orifice diameter by 6 ½” deep and is composed of shell tempered Alabama River Phase Black Film ceramics. It was broken into several pieces by the first pass of the earth moving machine and has been properly restored. One more cycle of the heavy tractor would probably have reduced both these vessels to hundreds if not thousands of tiny ceramic sherds. These two pots will probably date to the late seventeenth century AD during the Alabama Indian tribe occupation. This assumption is based on European glass trade beads, of that period, that were found with the pair.
The urn is incised on the inner shoulder with three scrolled lines encircling the entire circumference of the vessel and has fingernail punctates around the rim. There is speculation today that this motif of meandering scrolls seems to represent water and/or stylized snakes from the ceremonial/religious beliefs of the natives in the region during the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex period. The cover is incised on the exterior shoulder with alternating hand motifs and more scrolls. These decorations are similar to the Moundville Alabama temple mound elements but much less elaborate than what would have been executed a century or more before these two vessels were made. This possibly means that the Amerinds, during this time, had simply lost the meaning of these older religious icons but still wanted to decorate their ceramic artwork with the ideas of their ancestors. It is believed today that there was a general degeneration of ceramic styles and techniques during this Proto-Historic time period as compared to the earlier Southern Cult. It is a tragedy that the site was destroyed but it is fortunate that that the salvage operation was carried out and with it was saved these two rare and beautiful vessels. Because of their large size and thinness of walls and because the burials are relatively shallow, few of the urns and covers from this time period have escaped modern agricultural machines and are in existence today. But at least we have these two to study and hopefully provide more insight into the short lived and magnificent culture that produced this Rare Urn and Cover.
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