Engraved Tablet

An engraved tablet is a small, flat stone plaque, roughly postcard-sized, with a design cut in deep, smooth grooves into one face. Typical motifs are stylized birds of prey (heads, wings, talons and tails), sometimes combined with human hands and faces, laid out in symmetrical, curving panels with the background cut away. About 17 or 18 are reported, each named for its findspot, such as the Wilmington, Berlin, Gaitskill, Cincinnati, Cresap and Low tablets (Caldwell 2014/2015).

Most are fine-grained sandstone, including Ohio's Berea sandstone; exceptions are siltstone, limestone and one of fired clay. The design was incised and ground into the surface. Many tablets have grooves on the back worn by sharpening bone tools such as awls, and several carry red ochre or dark stains (Caldwell 2014/2015; Maslowski; Swinney 2019).

Archaeologists have proposed that the tablets were stamps for printing designs on skin, cloth or leather, or patterns for tattooing, the sharpening grooves suggesting awls used in tattooing or bloodletting (Webb and Baby 1957, cited in Caldwell 2014/2015). All come from Adena mounds; at Cresap some were thrown into a fire, which Caldwell reads as part of mortuary ritual. The key trait is a small flat stone plaque deeply engraved with stylized bird designs, often with sharpening grooves on the back.

About 120–130 mm long, 75–85 mm wide and 9–13 mm thick: Low tablet 122 × 84 × 9 mm (Maslowski); Cincinnati tablet about 127 × 76 × 13 mm (Swinney 2019), converted from inches.

Middle Ohio Valley: southern Ohio, northern Kentucky and West Virginia, with findspots including Cincinnati and Wilmington, Ohio; Gaitskill Mound, Kentucky; and Cresap Mound and Parkersburg, West Virginia (Caldwell 2014/2015; Kentucky Historical Society; Maslowski).

Genuine engraved tablets are very few and nearly all were recorded from Adena mounds; only two, Cresap and Wright, came from controlled excavations (Caldwell 2014/2015). Plain grooved tablets without designs form a related, larger group, and perforated slate tablets are gorgets. A stone with scattered scratches or simple sharpening grooves is not an engraved tablet. Caldwell (2014/2015) proposed a new ordering of the tablets based on the McKensie tablet. Engraved tablets were among the finds used to identify the Gaitskill Mound as Adena (Kentucky Historical Society).