Sourcing sandstone effigy pipes of the Lower Mississippi Valley (2013)
Undergraduate: Mallory Melton
Faculty Advisor: Vin Steponaitis
Department: Anthropology
The Lower Mississippi Valley has a long history as a region of archaeological intrigue. Archaeologists have been attracted to the area due to the prevalence of tall Mississippian period (1000-1700 AD) mounds. Effigy pipes, large pipes used to smoke a strong form of tobacco known as Nicotiana rustica, are considered to be one of the dominant forms of sacred iconography from this period. Recently, scholars have acknowledged the important role which geographic style boundaries can play in understanding specific artifact themes and their roles within the Mississippian world. This poster presents the results of a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) conducted in the summer of 2012. The project was constructed with a primary goal of sourcing sandstone effigy pipes of the Lower Mississippi Valley in order to inform understandings of Mississippian style boundaries. A number of interdisciplinary analyses informed this effort, including: the extraction of sandstone samples from waterfall outcrops on the western coast of Mississippi, comparison of collected samples to museum pipe specimens, and chemical testing of collected samples using a portable x-ray florescence device. The results of this study reflect upon possible sources of sandstone for effigy pipe production and are salient to discussions of the utility of using geological evidence to inform archaeological interpretations.