Bannerstone, Double-Notched Butterfly

Made between 6000 and 1000 BCE, carvings known as “bannerstones” are amongst the oldest finely sculpted lithics in the Americas. Indigenous North Americans created them from Michigan to the tip of Florida and from the Mississippi Valley over to the Atlantic coast. They carved and polished them with a peck and grind technology using a vast range of materials from soft sedimentary shale, to metamorphic slate or harder rock such as granite or quartz. Though bannerstones have been categorized by scholars into twenty-four different shapes, each one is a unique composition where sculptors appear to delight in the interplay of geologic characteristics in relation to the forms they sculpt. Using a hollow river reed, twisting it back and forth between their hands, adding water and sand to bite into the stone, they would drill a 1 to 2 centimeter hole down the center of the bannerstones for them to be hafted onto a shaft and hoisted or assembled on the body to be seen. Many bannerstones were found in areas at great distances from the geologic origin of the stone, revealing deep interest in stone texture and color and long distance travel and trade amongst ancient Indigenous sculptors. Of the thousands of bannerstones currently in public and private collections, many were found intentionally broken at the perforation where they are most fragile and then carefully placed in the ground. This breaking of bannerstones attests to Indigenous concepts about the materiality of stone and the act of breaking and of placing something of great value in the ground, not to be forgotten but to be remembered as active and alive.

An Indigenous sculptor created this Double-Notched Butterfly bannerstone carefully aligning the natural banding of the slate with the central raised ridge of the stone. The thinning of the flanges out from the thicker central ridge creates the appearance of undulating concentric waves of the dark bands of the slate. The sculptor may have chosen this particular stone because of the large off-white serpentine inclusion on one side that runs across and through the slate banding, adding an additional visual element to the composition. Sculptors often chose banded slate to carve these winged shapes categorized in the literature as “Butterflies.” There are scratches over the surface of the stone, evidence of the peck and grind technology used to shape and smooth the surface. There are multiple chips along the edges and at the perforation, signs of extensive use of this bannerstone in the Archaic period when it was placed on an atlatl (throwing stick) or staff. Along the narrow edge of one of the flanges 1979.206.403 is written in red.


Anna Blume, Professor of the History of Art, Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York 2023

References and Further Reading

Knoblock, Byron. Bannerstones of the North American Indian. LaGrange: LeGrange: Bryon Knoblock, 1939.

Lutz, David L. The Archaic Bannerstone: Its Chronological History and Purpose From 6000 B.C. to 1000 B.C. Newburg: David L. Lutz, 2000.

Sassaman, Kenneth. “Craftworks of Structure.” The Eastern Archaic Historicized. New York: AltaMira Press, 2010, pp. 97-142.

Bannerstone Project. Fashion Institute of Technology, https://bannerstone.fitnyc.edu/