Stone Gorgets of the Piedmont
Prehistoric American Indians who lived in the Southeast made a number of ornamental and decorative items, one of which is an object that we call a gorget (pronounced gore-get or gore-jet). We do not know the name(s) that the natives used for these ornamentations but today we use the word gorget which is an old French term denoting a piece of armor that was used to protect the wearer’s throat or gorge in battle. These Indian made objects were probably not used for this purpose but instead were most likely only worn as a piece of religious/ceremonial art - these stone gorgets of the Piedmont.
These artifacts take a number of shapes but all the various configurations have several morphological traits in common. They are usually long and relatively narrow; they have at least one flat face; and they have at least two drilled holes that presumably were used to suspend the gorget from the wearer’s neck or attached to clothing or a body extremity. Stone gorgets were made throughout the eastern half of our country but the area of the seemingly largest concentration was the Midwest in the modern states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois based on the quantities found in that region. The Midwestern Woodland Period Cultures, especially the Adena and Hopewell people, made and presumably wore many styles of these stone ornaments including the ones called Pentagonal, Humped, Expanded Center, Indented, Biconcave, Reel, Spine Backed, Bell and Shovel Shaped. These regional natives made over twenty shapes of gorget type ornaments. In the Southeast, especially the Piedmont of the Carolinas and Virginia, however, gorgets are not at all common and the ones that have been found are usually of the Elliptical and Rectangular shapes but even more rare examples of Expanded Center, Quadriconcave and Boat Shaped motifs have been found with descriptions of all shown below.
Rectangular Gorgets: These artifacts in this region are obviously rectangular in outline and usually range from two to six inches in length and one to two inches wide. They are normally about ¼ to ½ inches thick with both faces being flattened though they can be found with one face flattened and the other rounded or plano-convex. The sides are straight to very slightly excurvate and the normally straight ends are squared to the sides with each corner having a slight radius. These ornaments usually have two drilled holes equidistant from the ends but some few have three or more holes. These presumed suspension holes are normally drilled from both faces and will appear as bi-conical drillings being of larger diameters at the face surface and smaller at the center of the thickness of the object. Some, though, have holes drilled only from one face thus leaving single conical holes. Often all these gorgets styles will be found that clearly exhibit wear marks in the stone between the holes where the objects were attached with a leather or sinew thong so as to be suspended on the wearer’s body. Rectangular gorgets will occasionally have cut tally marks along the edges for what purpose we really do not understand.
Elliptical Gorgets: These are also called oval gorgets and are usually slightly shorter and wider than the rectangular types but are normally of the same thickness. The sides of these objects are outwardly curved giving them the elliptical or oval shapes and the ends may be rounded or pointed. The suspension holes drilling will be the same as the rectangular type. These also occasionally show tally marks along the curved edges but with less frequency than the rectangular gorgets.
Expanded Center Gorgets: These ornaments normally exhibit a bulge in the center of the long dimensions which are also thicker in that area and taper considerably towards each end. The ends are usually somewhat straight but may be slightly rounded and one face of these gorgets will be flat while the other will be convex. Some of these gorgets are completely different from the other types in that they have no drilled suspension holes for which, as in the tally marks, we have no explanation other than they were maybe performs that were never drilled and finished. If they do have holes, the drilling is normally started and finished from the flat face giving two single conical holes. They can be smaller in length and width than the rectangular and oval types with the thickness being considerably more in the center.
Boat Shaped Gorgets: These objects take two forms. One, when looking at the flat face, resembles a modern row boat being narrow and pointed on one end and flat on the other and is the only gorget type that is not symmetrical. The other shape is long and narrow and pointed on both ends thus resembling a canoe and is similar to some elliptical gorgets except it is normally much narrower in width. Both types range in about the same lengths at the oval and rectangular gorgets. They will usually have two flat faces and the drilling is normally done from both of the face surfaces thus leaving bi-conical holes.
Quadriconcave Gorget: These rectangular shaped gorgets have both side edges and both ends in a concave or incurvate form and all four corners are sharply pointed. Both faces are flattened and the hole drilling is usually from each face or bi-conical. The sizes of these gorgets can be larger than all the others, especially in the width and a very few examples have been found exceeding eight inches in length.
These are the five basic shapes in which Carolina and Virginia gorgets are found but there are certainly others. These artifacts are considerably more rare here than in the Midwest but they can and have been found from the coast to the mountains. The primary lithic material used by the natives to fashion these ornaments was steatite which differs from the slate used mainly in other regions. Steatite is reasonably common in this area, especially in the foothills and mountains so it is logical that the natives would have used this soft and easily worked stone. But the Amerinds also did use other minerals such as grey banded slate, granite, schist, red slate, greenstone, hematite, chlorite, limestone and even native copper though gorgets made of these minerals are rarer than soapstone in this region. These gorgets were made and used from the Late Archaic (beginning around 4000 BC) through the Woodland ( 1000 BC to AD 1000) and Mississippian into the Historic Period of around AD 1700 in the Piedmont with the most probably being made in the prehistoric Woodland and Mississippian Periods. Most were used as body ornaments being suspended around the wearer’s neck or sewn onto garments according to archaeological surveys 
and early European explorer’s accounts. Today we can only speculate just why the ancient people made these unusual ornaments but a good guess is they had some unknown ceremonial/religious meaning. If you are lucky enough to be the modern owner of one of these decorative items, be happy that you have a rare stone gorget of the Piedmont.
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Brose, David S, James A. Brown & David W. Penney
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TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, Vol. 54, Part 5
1964
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