Interpreting context and chronology of Cahokia-Caddo mythic female stone figures

Abstract

ABSTRACT While large red stone figurines and pipes were occasionally discovered by early investigators, only recently were they recovered in secure archaeological context demonstrating them to be twelfth-century Cahokian productions geologically sourced to unique flint clay sources near St. Louis. A subset of these are female figures associated with fertility and renewal motifs. Examination of these female figures demonstrates that while they reference similar mythic beings, the figures hold very different positions in local religious and social infrastructure. At Cahokia they are part of a formalized religious cult that is key to that polity's assent while outside of Greater Cahokia, e.g., in the Caddo region, they appear as mortuary inclusions indicating they were inalienable possessions of certain individuals. Furthermore it can be proposed that these outlying figures, transformed to pipes, might have been part of medicine bundles maintained by female bundle keepers involved in curing. The archaeological evidence makes apparent that such religious objects cannot be simply glossed over in terms of their iconic homogeneity or ethnohistoric analogies but must be interpreted in terms of their roles in which they were embedded within the religious, social, and political life of local societies.