Plummet

A plummet is a ground and polished stone shaped like a builder's plumb bob or a teardrop, with a groove or a drilled hole at the narrow upper end. Bodies range from slender spindles to near-spheres; the base may be blunt, pointed or nipple-like, and some have two grooves, a groove near the middle, a lengthwise groove, or a flattened, hollowed top (Fowke 1896; Hodge 1910). A few are carved as duck heads or incised (Moorehead 1910).

Poverty Point plummets were ground from heavy lumps of magnetite, hematite and limonite, occasionally other stone (Gibson 1985, 1996); broken soapstone vessels were sometimes reworked into plummets (Gibson 1996). Fowke (1896) also recorded sandstone, quartzite, granite, steatite and sandy limestone. Replicas were flaked, pecked and ground, and pecking was the slowest step (Treganza and Valdivia 1955, cited in Schneider and Osborne 1996).

Their use is unproven, and sources disagree. Fowke (1896) read rough, deeply grooved Florida shell-mound plummets as sinkers; Holmes (in Hodge 1910) thought many were pendants or charms, some found around the waist of a buried person; Moorehead (1910) favored charms; Gibson first judged Poverty Point plummets most likely bola weights (1985) and later net weights (1996). The key trait is a heavy, polished teardrop-shaped stone with a groove or hole at one end for suspension.

Length 70–108 mm; width 22–28 mm (two Metropolitan Museum specimens: a Deptford basalt plummet from Florida, 108 × 22 mm, and a hematite plummet from Oklahoma, 70 × 28 mm). No published size range for a large sample was found.

Widespread, but most plentiful in Florida, the Lower Mississippi Valley, where they mark the Poverty Point culture, and central California (Hodge 1910; Holmes 1919; Gibson 1996). Also reported from New England, the Middle Atlantic, the Ohio Valley, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Alabama and eastern Canada, with related forms on the Northwest Coast and in the Arctic (Pennypacker 1938), and in Archaic cemeteries on the lower Guadalupe River in Texas.

Identification tips: Hematite and magnetite plummets feel very heavy for their size. Check the narrow end for a smoothed groove or a drilled hole, and look for an overall ground or polished surface.

Similar types: A Net Sinker is a rough, mostly unground pebble with notches or a pecked groove. A Bola Stone is round with the groove around its middle. A Cone has a flat base and no groove. A Stone Pendant is flat and drilled through the face.

Naming: The name comes from the builder's plummet (Hodge 1910). Peabody's 1901 study "The So-Called Plummets" tabulated some two dozen proposed uses (Moorehead 1910). California examples are often called charmstones (Schneider and Osborne 1996); southern California Indians credited such stones with bringing rain, luck and cures (Fowke 1896; Hodge 1910).

Dating evidence: Plummets are a defining artifact of Poverty Point culture, and sites rich in plummets are also rich in imported hematite (Gibson 1996).