southwestern turtle effigy

bottom of side-drilled stone turtle effigy pendant

Take a gander at this beautiful little soapstone turtle pendant artifact from a Pueblo I site in Apache County, Arizona.


One of Lone Mountain's archaeologists, Stephanie Waldo, found this awesome stone effigy during a recent survey. Compared to the trillions of ceramic sherds and flakes out there, this was a pretty cool find.

Here's the little pendant, itself. It's carved from soapstone, with incised lines, and a perforation for stringing.

top of pendant

bottom of pendant

side of pendant, showing drill hole

When I first saw the pendant, I thought it was a bird. Stephanie managed to convince me that it was a turtle.

real live turtle in its typical basking pose. note the positions of its head and limbs.

i can dig it.

  

Douglas Boggess, our principal archaeologist, has done some ethnographic research on turtle symbolism. He says that the turtle is the first hibernating animal to wake up, and therefore is a harbinger of spring. During the winter solstice, some pueblos have a turtle dance, in anticipation of the coming of spring.

The pendant was found at a site in Apache County, Arizona, not far from the Rio Puerco. The site, a fairly dense surface scatter of typical lithic and ceramic artifacts (between 250 and 300 artifacts) and fire-cracked rock, was likely occupied several times, and has Late Archaic to Basketmaker II (1600 B.C. to A.D. 300) and Pueblo I to Pueblo II Anasazi (A.D. 750 to 1050) temporal and cultural affiliations, based on ceramics and projectile points. The surface artifacts are mostly concentrated in the center of the site, and the pendant was found on the northernmost edge of the concentration.

site overview. this majestic view is typical of most of our project areas.

beautiful pink chalcedony Archaic stemmed dart point
(possibly a Datil point, 1600 B.C. to A.D. 300)

little pink projectile point tip

Identified ceramic types include Kiatuthlanna Black-on-white (A.D. 750 to 850)
and Red Mesa Black-on-white (A.D. 900 to 1050)

According to Zonna Barnes (2010), side-drilled, zoomorphic (animal-shaped) pendants began to appear in the Southwest during the Pueblo I Period (A.D. 750 to 900), although other types of pendants had been widely used for much longer.  Zoomorphic pendants have been found in many different contexts, including ritual and burial as well as domestic. These are ubiquitous. They are ALL OVER THE PLACE, apparently, although I've never seen one before.

pendants found at Pueblo Bonito.

Further reading:

Barnes, Zonna. 2010. Social Identity and Ornamentation in the Puebloan Southwest: Basketmaker II to Pueblo IV. Masters Thesis. University of Colorado. Anthropology Department.Available at http://scholar.colorado.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=anth_gradetds.

Jernigan, E. Wesley. 1978. Jewelry of the Prehistoric Southwest. School of American Research, Santa Fe.