by David H. Dye, University of Memphis
Volume 65, Number 4, October 2018 Central States Archaeological Journal
The Chucalissa sinti bottle (Figs 1–3) is an engraved and polished ceramic bottle excavated by Charles N. Nash and Melissa (Nash) Shelby County, Tennessee in the mid-1950s (Nash 1955). It is informally referred to as the “sinti” bottle as sinti is the Choctaw word for snake. Current ideas about Lower Mississippi Valley people, however, would argue for the bottle being crafted by local Tunican speakers, rather than western Muskogean Choctaw, for example (Harris 1985; Knight 2010). The bottle was deposited sometime in the latter part of the Walls phase (A.D. 1350 to 1550), probably at the time of a mortuary (Knight et al. 2017). The vessel’s base is concave, and the large, plain globular bottle and a Nodena Red and White, interior painted bottle (Fig. 4), which held an articulated raccoon skeleton. Interior painted bowls are generally found on sites dating to the late sixteenth to seventeenth century in the Lower Mississippi Valley.
Two contrasting, intertwined snakes are engraved on the unusual beaker-shaped bottle (Nash 1955:56). Phillips and Brown (1980) argue that a shape, the bottle is thought to have been locally made. Archaeologists now place the bottle in the recently formulated Lower Mississippi Valley Shell Bluff style (Knight et al. 2017). The engraved serpent composition is laid out across all design fields of the vessel, including the base (Fig. 3), creating the sensation that the “intertwined snakes are writhing around every part of it” (Knight et al. 2017:205). Although there is no design symmetry as such, the intertwined snakes envelop the vessel in such a way as to imply a centering function for the vessel or its contents.
The two rattlesnakes (Figs 5, 6) have contrasting body patterns and eye surrounds. Such serpents are considered Beneath World denizens. In this sense, the serpent with the forked tongue is thought to be located in the Beneath World watery realm, while the bell-shaped eye surround may place the other snake in the night sky realm. The different eye surrounds and body treatments appear to represent conceptually similar water spirits that occupy different locales and perhaps manifest varying behaviors, powers, and qualities.
References Cited:
Knight, Vernon J., George E. Lankford, Erin Phillips, David H. Dye, Vince P. Steponaitis, and Michael C. Riedel
2017 The Shell Bluff Style. Southeastern Archaeology 36:193–213.
Nash, Charles H.
1955 The Shell Bluff Mound. Southeastern Archaeology 11:93–98.
Phillips, Philip, and James A. Brown
1980 Pre-Columbian Shell Engraving from Craig Mound at Spiro, Oklahoma. Harvard University Press, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge.