by Dr. Sandy Carter, Roswell, Georgia
Volume 65, Nuber 2, April 2018 Central States Archaeological Journal
Figure 1. The engraved Wilbanks monolithic axe. It measures 11 in length.
Having recently acquired one of the Wilbanks Site (9CK-5) earspools [Ref.1], I decided to learn more about another famous “Wilbanks” artifact, the Wilbanks monolithic axe [Fig.1].
The Wilbanks axe (Figs. 1-6) is an engraved greenstone monolithic axe that has been curated by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (catalog # A317614-0) since 1922. The Smithsonian collections catalog notes the provenance of the “Wilbanks” engraved monolithic stone axe as “near” Ball Ground, Cherokee County, Georgia and donated in 1922 by James S. Lawson [Ref. 2]. The first published paper about this axe was by Antonio J. Waring, Jr. in 1948 [Ref.3]. Waring refers to correspondence from James Lawson of Ball Ground and states that in 1917 “the axe was found on the banks of the Etowah River ‘near’ Ball Ground, Cherokee County, Georgia” and concluded it was found on the Wilbanks Site. Other than “near” Ball Ground, the exact location was not mentioned in Lawson’s correspondence, but presumably was on Wilbanks property, since that name has always been associated with the axe.
It turns out that the Wilbanks family has had two different properties on the Etowah River. One was the Wilbanks Site (9CK-5), twenty miles up-river from the Etowah Mounds (now under Lake Allatoona near Sweetwater Campground and not “near” Ball Ground).
The second property was the Wilbanks farm, forty two miles up-river from the Etowah Mounds and in Gober, near Ball Ground. A warranty deed search confirms the Wilbanks family has owned the Ball Ground property since January 1901 (Deed Book aa Page 105-622), the oldest reference to Wilbanks owning/leasing property at the down-river Wilbanks Site is 1938-1940 [Ref.4]. The Wilbanks farm in Ball Ground is on a loop of the Etowah River with a fish weir and is surrounded by many other Mississippian town sites and mounds and is ten miles down-stream from the Talwa Mound Site (9CK-1) [Ref.5]. The Wilbanks farm in Ball Ground has been professionally excavated (personal communication, James C. Lawson, not James S. Lawson) but I am not aware of any publication.
Therefore, it seems Waring inferred the wrong provenance for the Wilbanks axe. The provenance of an artifact may seem unimportant, but if an artifact is associated with an incorrect site, then its interpretation in the spectrum of style evolution is problematic. Brown refers to the inexact provenance of the Wilbanks axe in his discussion of the transformation between the Classic Braden Style and the Late Braden Style [Ref. 6].
In 2009, Ai summarized the current knowledge on monolithic axes with particular reference to the Wilbanks axe [Ref. 7]. Monolithic axes date to
Figure 2. Frontal view of the Wilbanks monolithic axe, showing the blade and the high degree of craftsmanship utilized in manufacturing it. Note the raised ring at the bottom and the drilled tang. Most likely this was used to hold feathers or some other decorative drop rather than being a suspension hole.
Above: Figure 3. The Wilbanks Monolithic Axe, Smithsonian (NMNH) [photo: Ref. 2]. The axe has had the engraving highlighted utilizing a white powder. The axe appears red, but its true color is green. This same Smithsonian picture is also shown on page 203 as Figure 29 in Hero, Hawk and Open Hand (2004). The axe is additionally pictured in black and white in Sun Circles and Human Hands (1957) on plate 90. This is the first time this axe has been published in true color (Figs. 1,2,4,6). It is made from a highly polished greenstone.
At right: Figure 4. Close up view of the axe. The engraving is very light on the surface. Red ochre was originally applied to the surface and fills some of the engraved lines. The stone has some red inclusions, which are evident on the prow and the saddle.
At top left: Figure 5. Wilbanks Axe iconography (redrawn from Waring, 1968).
At right: Figure 6. A close-up view of the axe showing the engraving. The photograph has been enhanced to highlight the engraving, which is just barely etched onto the surface.
Figure 7. The Wilbanks Site earspools. They measure 2 3/16 inches in diameter. The spool on the left is in the collection of the author. The spool on the right is in the collection of the Smithsonian (NMNH).
1300–1400 AD and the engraved imagery [Fig. 2] on the Wilbanks axe is described by Lankford as mortuary symbolism. The axe has two skulls with protruding tongues (“soul of a deceased human”), a bone which is a death icon, and a hand which represents the “path of souls… and the portal is in its palm” [Ref. 8].
In summary, there is little doubt that the Wilbanks axe was found in 1917 at the Fred E. Wilbanks farm, on the Etowah River “near” Ball Ground, Georgia and not at the Wilbanks Site twenty miles downstream. Its engraving represents mortuary symbolism of the Late Braden Style, that is also seen at Moundville, Alabama.
Addendum: It was noted in reference 1, that the Smithsonian website shows their having two right lobe Wilbanks Site earspools; however, during a visit in October 2017 to the Smithsonian’s Cultural Resource Center it was realized that one of the two earspools pictured is a cast, and Figure 7 shows the pair of the “real” Wilbanks Site earspools pictured together for the first time.
Figure 8. The author at the Smithsonian holding the actual Wilbanks monolithic axe in October, 2017.
Photography by Steven Cooper
References
- Carter, Dr. Sandy, The Wilbanks Earspool, Central States Archaeological Journal, pp. 133–136, Volume 64, Number 3, July 2017.
- http://collections.nmnh.si.edu/search/anth.
- Waring, A.J., Jr., Monolithic Axes (1948): An Engraved Monolithic Axe from Georgia. In The Waring Papers: The Collected Works of Antonio J. Waring, Jr., edited by S. Williams, pp. 78–80, 1968.
- Wauchope, Robert, Archaeological Survey of Northern Georgia, Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology, Number 21, p. 280, 1966.
- Thornton, Richard L., Ancient Roots II, The Indigenous People and Architecture of the Etowah River Valley, p. 50, 2007.
- Brown, James, Sequencing the Braden Style within Mississippian Period Art and Iconography. In Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms, edited by F.K. Reilly III and J.F. Garber, pp. 231–232, 2007.
- Aid, Toney, Monolithic Axes of the United States, Prehistoric American, Volume XLIII, Number 3, pp. 3–8, 2009.
- Lankford, George E., The “Path of Souls”: Some Death Imagery in the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. In Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms, pp. 174–212, 2007.