Lot 54

Native American Stone Gorget, Bannerstone Preform & Pottery Trowel Group

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Lot 54
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Native American Stone Gorget, Bannerstone Preform & Pottery Trowel Group
Native American Stone Gorget, Bannerstone Preform & Pottery Trowel Group
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Native American Stone Gorget, Bannerstone Preform & Pottery Trowel Group

Estimate: $900 - $1,300

Starting Bid: $450

(0 Bids)
by Artemis Fine Arts
August 6, 2026 9:00 AM MDT
Live Auction
686 S. Taylor Avenue
Suite 108
Louisville, CO, US 80027

Native American, Mississippian and Archaic cultures, ca. 6000 BCE – 1500 CE. A trio of worked-stone and fired-clay implements spanning millennia of Eastern Woodlands craft. The largest is a two-hole gorget of polished hardstone, its elongated tabular body drilled at center from both faces, a form worn as a pendant of status or lashed as a regalia ornament. Beside it rests a smoothed rectangular block, likely an Archaic preform or unfinished bannerstone, arrested mid-manufacture before its central perforation was ever begun. The third piece is a fired-clay pottery trowel, its mushroom-like discoid head balanced on a splayed three-pointed handle, a potter's tool used to compress and burnish the interior walls of coil-built vessels. Together the group traces the long arc of indigenous lithic and ceramic technology, from utilitarian toolkit to objects of personal adornment. Size of largest (gorget): 5.9" L x 2.3" W (15.0 cm L x 5.8 cm W).

The two-hole gorget belongs to a long-lived Eastern Woodlands tradition of drilled tabular ornaments; paired perforations allowed the piece to hang flat against the chest, and such gorgets appear across Archaic through Mississippian contexts. Bannerstones, by contrast, are among the most enigmatic of North American ground-stone forms, typically interpreted as weights (bannerstone counterbalances) for the atlatl, or spear-thrower; a preform preserves the intermediate stage before the diagnostic central bore was drilled. The pottery trowel, sometimes called a "mushroom" trowel for its capped profile, was pressed against the inner wall of a vessel while a paddle struck the exterior, thinning and consolidating the clay. Its survival intact is notable, as these humble workshop tools were rarely curated.

Provenance: private Colorado, USA Collection; ex-private Denver, Colorado, USA collection; ex-private Flushing, New York and Ridgeway, Colorado, USA collection

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Item # 203157

  • Condition: Handle of trowel has been reattached with minor chipping along visible break line. Some pitting to trowel in areas. All have weathering to surfaces with small chips, nicks, and abrasions commensurate with age. Otherwise, gorget and preform are intact and all have nice forms with scattered earthen deposits.

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Bid Increments
From: To: Increments:
$0 $299 $25
$300 $999 $50
$1,000 $1,999 $100
$2,000 $4,999 $250
$5,000 $9,999 $500
$10,000 $19,999 $1,000
$20,000 $49,999 $2,500
$50,000 $99,999 $5,000
$100,000 $199,999 $10,000
$200,000 + $20,000