Reel-Shaped Gorget

A reel-shaped gorget is a thin, flat ornament whose outline looks like a reel or spool seen from the side: a narrow body with four arms flaring to the corners, the long sides and the ends cut in deep concave curves. Arms may be angular or rounded. Stone examples are roughly square, about 75–95 mm across (Mills 1916).

Stone reels were ground and polished from slate, often banded slate, or from banded shale, granite or alabaster (Mills 1916; Henderson and Schlarb 2007). Two holes are drilled close together near the center (Bell 1980; Mills 1916), and one Tremper Mound specimen has a shallow groove on one face. The same outline was cut from sheet copper, and at Tremper Mound copper and stone reels lay together, one stone reel corroded onto a copper one (Mills 1916).

They are ornaments or emblems known mainly from Adena and Hopewell mounds. In Kentucky, Adena reel-shaped gorgets of banded shale or granite are interpreted as made for burial (Henderson and Schlarb 2007), and Mills (1916) reported that C. B. Moore found 19 reels in Tennessee River mounds lying on the chest or at the pelvis. The key trait is a flat, four-armed reel outline with deeply concave sides and two small holes near the center.

Stone: 83–95 mm long and 73–76 mm wide; copper: 76–102 mm long and 73–105 mm wide (Tremper Mound, Ohio, Mills 1916).

Ohio Valley (southern Ohio and Kentucky) and the Tennessee River valley in Alabama and Tennessee (Mills 1916; Henderson and Schlarb 2007; Griffin 1941); a few reported from Green Lake and Outagamie counties, Wisconsin (Moorehead 1910).

Reel bannerstones (Knoblock's reel form) are thick, with one large hole bored through the long axis; reel-shaped gorgets are thin plates with two small holes through the face (Moorehead 1917; Mills 1916). Bow-tie or expanded-center gorgets have a pinched middle but only two flaring ends, not four arms. Copper reels share the outline but are hammered sheet copper. Mills (1916) judged the ornament peculiar to certain Hopewell groups; Kentucky Adena examples show it was older (Henderson and Schlarb 2007).