THE PRACTICAL AND SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LIGHTNING WHELK Paper presented at the 80 th annual Society for American Archaeology meeting, April 16, 2015 (Spoken Version) William H. Marquardt and Laura Kozuch 1 2 The lightning whelk is named for the colorful, jagged lines visible on its outer whorl. It lives in marine waters of the southern Atlantic coast of the U.S., along the Gulf of Mexico from the Florida Keys to Texas, and along the Mexican Gulf coast as far as the Yucatán peninsula. The whelk grows slowly but is long-lived, with some individuals reaching 15 to 30 cm long, even as much as 40 cm. (The particular one I am holding up is 35 cm long.) Conventionally, we view the snail on its anterior end with the aperture facing us. From this perspective, one sees its most distinctive characteristic: 3 it opens to the left, not the right. Such snails are referred to as sinistral; those that open on the right are called dextral. 4 Another way of expressing this is to say that when viewed from the top of the spire, and then tracing the helix from the edge into the center, the lightning whelk shell spirals clockwise, not counter-clockwise as do almost all other snails in the world. 5 Tens of thousands of lightning whelk shells are found along with other food debris in southwest-Florida middens. The whelks were gathered from nearby shallow-water estuaries. Zooarchaeologists have documented their significant contribution to the aboriginal diet. Although finfish contributed the great majority of the protein intake, shellfish were always important, and became especially critical during times of sea-level regression when finfishes retreated to deeper waters. A second use of the lightning whelk shell in southern Florida was for making tools. 6 Indian people made shell implements for hammering, cutting, perforating, and woodworking, as well as for use as containers and net gauges. Their use dates at least to the Late Middle Archaic period in the form of cutting-edged tools and hammers made from whelk-shell columellas as well as shouldered adzes. As the cutting-edged tools wore down or were reduced by breakage, they were recycled into smaller cutting-edged tools and finally to small hammers. 7 Similar forms are found elsewhere in coastal Florida and in quite limited numbers in southern Atlantic coastal sites and in non-Florida sites near the Gulf of Mexico. Outside of their area of origin, the whelk shells had ritual significance. They are found in burial contexts dating to 6000-3000 years ago, especially in western Kentucky, northern Alabama, and western Tennessee. 8 Large columella beads and “pins,” composite atlatl weights, perforated whorls, vessels, pendants, and gorgets were made from lightning whelks. Many disk shell beads were also probably made of whelk shells, but the species cannot be identified positively. Small, whole-shell beads of Marginella and Leptoxis were also included in Archaic-period burials. In the Shell Mound Archaic of western Kentucky, shell beads are the most common burial inclusions. All lightning whelk shell artifacts, of all shapes and types, are from graves, and all would have come from the Gulf of Mexico or lower Atlantic coasts, both over 800 km distant. Watson and I estimate that the lightning whelk artifacts represented in the Green River shell mound burials would have required between 750 and 1,000 large, robust lightning whelk shells. 1