Materials Example 5, AMNH 1/1821
Bottle bannerstone; Mississippi, ferruginous quartz, h. 7.5, w. 5.9 cm.
When Archaic sculptors chose to make their bannerstones using ferruginous quartz, they carved them into what are known as Quartz Butterfly, Hourglass, or Bottle variants such as AMNH 1/1821. This particular quartz, due to the presence of iron, ranges in color from brown, to red, to yellow, and orange with luminous, translucent milky white areas. Quartz is significantly more difficult to peck, grind, and perforate than most any other kinds of rock chosen for bannerstones. Their shapes, therefore, tend to be more compact with less exceedingly thin wings or dramatic cut away negative spaces more common with the slate stone compositions. It is the mottled luminosity of the quartz and the restraint in overall composition that distinguishes them.