How the Ji’kmaqn Came to Spiro: Possible Additions to the Inventory of Sound-Making Instruments Depicted in the Spiro Engravings

Abstract

While doing research on turtle shell rattles the author stumbled onto a photograph of a rare and unusual idiophone whose exact likeness appears twice in one of the engraved shell images from Spiro. This paper describes the instrument and the Spiro image and discusses how an instrument currently found only in the Maritime Provinces of Canada may have come to be portrayed on a marine shell cup found at Spiro.