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A Mississippian Headdress from Etowah, Georgia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Lewis H. Larson Jr.*
Affiliation:
Georgia Historical Commission, Cartersville, Ga.

Abstract

The small embossed ornaments of sheet copper found in Southeastern sites have usually been identified as “pendants” or “symbol badges,” and have been considered part of the ritual equipment of the Southern Cult. Four graves of the Wilbanks period at Etowah contained such objects. They had apparently been mounted with feathers and slender wooden rods to form elaborate headdresses. Observers from the 16th century onwards describe “crowns” worn by the Coosa, Creek, and Natchez nobility that would have been very similar.

Type
Facts and Comments
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1959

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