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23-871: Little Egypt may refer to: Little Egypt (archaeological site) , Mississippian culture site located in Murray County, Georgia Little Egypt (dancer) , stage name of three belly dancers A nickname for Southern Illinois A neighborhood in Astoria, Queens , New York City Little Egypt, Texas , in Dallas County A neighborhood in Cumberland, Maryland . Little Egypt , novel by Lesley Glaister Little Egypt (film) , 1951 American film starring Rhonda Fleming " Little Egypt (Ying-Yang) ", 1961 song written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller Little Egypt,

46-580: A whirlwind and dancing movement . There are over 30 pre-contact examples of the Cox Mound gorget style, found in Tennessee and northern Alabama and dating from 1250 to 1450 CE. The Cox Mound gorget style features four woodpecker heads facing counter-clockwise, a four-lopped square motif, and a sometimes a cross within a rayed circle. It has been interpreted as a visualization of the Yuchi myth of

69-565: A wrestler in the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling series Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Little Egypt . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Little_Egypt&oldid=1246365807 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description

92-479: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Little Egypt (archaeological site) The site lay on a stretch of the Coosawattee River. It was a large village about 12.5 acres (0.051 km ) with three platform mounds and a plaza . Two of the mounds were over 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) in height. The main mound was built up in four stages over

115-581: The Guale Indians of Georgia . Mask gorgets, although rare, are found throughout the southeast, with the most prominent site clusters occurring in the Ohio River valley, eastern Tennessee, and the Arkansas delta, although finds have been found as far afield as North Dakota. The masks have bas-relief noses, drilled eyes, engraved or drill mouths, and sometimes forked-eye motifs or zigzags under

138-523: The United States , during the Hopewell tradition (200 BCE – 500 CE) and Mississippian cultural period (c. 800–1500 CE); however, tribes from other regions and time periods also carved shell gorgets. The earliest shell gorgets date back to 3000 years BP . They are believed to have been insignia of status or rank, either civic, military, or religious, or amulets of protective medicine. Due to

161-588: The chiefdom then consisted of eight villages. Archaeologists have identified the remains of seven of these. The population of the Coosa chiefdom is thought to have been between about 2,500 to 4,650 people. The chief of Coosa ruled over a significantly wider confederation of other chiefdoms, whose territory spread 400 miles along the Appalachian Mountains across northern Georgia into eastern Tennessee and central Alabama , and whose populations totaled in

184-537: The coasts of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico , the shells were traded through the Eastern Woodlands. This native trade continued into the 16th century. Gorgets are carved from the penultimate whorl of the shell. A blank is cut or broken out, then ground smooth. Holes for suspension and decoration are drilled, sometimes with a bow drills or chert drills. The gorget forms a concave shape and, when engraved,

207-561: The course of many years. Each stage may have represented the inter-generational change from a chief to his successor. Sometime around 1475 A.D. the site became the capital of a paramount chiefdom ruling over numerous other local villages. The Coosa chiefdom encountered by the Hernando de Soto expedition had its capital at the Little Egypt site. De Soto and his expedition entered the Coosa chiefdom in 1540. Chroniclers recorded that

230-410: The cross-in-circle design, which references the sun and the ceremonial fire, fed by four logs aligned to cardinal directions. Another design widely agreed upon is the water spider with a cross-in-circle design on its cephalothorax . Spider gorgets have a widespread distribution but are commonly found in what is now Illinois . Turtle shells and stones have also infrequently been carved into gorgets. In

253-423: The eyes. Small shell cameos , under two inches wide, were found at Spiro Mounds. Although dating is difficult in the current archaeological context, these masks are likely to be a later phenomenon (c. 1500–1700): although they are often found in sites that also produce 16th century Spanish trade goods, they are entirely absent from classic mound sites, which were active until the fourteenth century. Iconography on

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276-561: The four winds. The rayed circle or sun is interpreted literally, a deity or ancestors, council, and/or sacred fire. The entire design could also illustrate the Yuchi myth of the winds. A gorget from the Castalian Springs Mound Site in Tennessee features a man holding a mace and severed head. This has been interpreted by some anthropologists as a "flying shaman." Some agreement can be found in interpreting

299-412: The graves of young people and are believed to relate to age as opposed to status. The forked-eye motif, commonly identified as markings from a peregrine falcon , dates back to the Hopewell exchange , and the symbol references excellent vision and hunting skill among Muscogee Creek people. "Strength of Life" design is interpreted by Kvokovtee Scott and Phillip Deer (Muscogee medicine man) as referencing

322-405: The historic period, Creeks then Cherokees were known to inhabit the general area, but not the mounds themselves. A.R. Kelly surveyed this location and excavated sites nearby. Hally and his team excavated several pits, 5 feet (1.5 m) by 10 feet (3.0 m) by 3 feet (0.91 m) and several trenches 3 feet (0.91 m) in width. The site consisted of two mounds and a village nearby. Mound A

345-650: The interior is polished and decorated. While most gorgets are circular, some are shaped as rectangles with rounded corners, maskettes, or other novel shapes. An extremely elaborate pendant from Spiro Mounds is shaped as two hands connected by a common beaded bracelet. Adena cultures created gorgets from slate and copper, but the Hopewell Exchange System brought exotic shells from the Gulf northward. Initially, Hopewellian peoples carved plain shell gorgets around 1000 BCE. Engraved gorgets appeared in

368-462: The late Hopewell. A Glacial Kame culture marine-shell gorget from the Great Lakes dates from 1000 BCE and features an engraved bear or opossum with an umbilical cord. As Mississippian shell gorgets were traded widely, common designs have a widespread geographical distribution. Calusa people of southern Florida harvested and carved gorgets. Coiled rattlesnakes gorgets were found among

391-549: The placement of the holes in the gorgets, they are also thought to be spinners that could produce whistling sounds. Lightning whelk ( Sinistrofulgur perversum ) is the most common shell used for gorgets. Other shells, such as the true conch or Strombus , as well as freshwater mussels , are also carved into gorgets. Today, due to environmental causes, harvested lightning whelks are significantly smaller than in precontact times. These earlier shells typically ranged from 6 to 12 inches (15 to 30 cm) in length. Harvested off

414-590: The shell gorgets comes from the Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere . Extremely common designs include the triskele , coiled rattlesnake, spider, chunkey player, and birdman, sometimes called a Falcon Impersonater. Native Americans, art historians, and anthropologists all have a wide range of often conflicting interpretations of the Mississippian iconography. Coiled rattlesnake gorgets were often found in

437-562: The site, falling into the basic categories of Woodland, Woodstock, and Lamar designs. Several time periods were represented in the excavation. See table below. Shell gorget#Mississippian Shell gorgets are a Native American art form of polished, carved shell pendants worn around the neck. The gorgets are frequently engraved, and are sometimes highlighted with pigments, or fenestrated (pierced with openings). Shell gorgets were most common in Eastern Woodlands of

460-441: The site—only a limited number of them appeared in the mounds, suggesting a hierarchy of foodstuffs. Some artifacts unburied during the process of excavation include: columella beads, cut and ground antler, bone awls, a shell mask , brass rings, and copper plate fragments . Some worked stone tools were found. Rock flakes , blades , points, and bifaces were also found. Twenty distinct types of pottery sherds were found throughout

483-484: The tens of thousands. This "paramount chiefdom consisted of seven or more smaller chiefdoms, representing about 50,000 people." The Little Egypt site was excavated twice, once by Warren K. Moorehead in 1925 and again by David Hally (in association with the University of Georgia ) in 1969. The site had been damaged by farming in the area since European settlement as well as erosion due to the water sources nearby. In

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506-506: The winds. The four-looped square, or guilloche , is considered by some to be a "whirling sun" motif, or a priestly or chiefly litter ; by some, the earth held up by cords to the Sky Vault at the four cardinal points; and by others, the path of life with four stages of maturity. Woodpeckers are associated with the four winds and are medicine birds that can extract illnesses among Muscogee Creeks. The birds are also sometimes interpreted as

529-538: Was 9 feet (2.7 m) in height and Mound B was 6 feet (1.8 m) in height at the time of Hally's excavation. Features uncovered included several smudge pits for deer hide, layers of ash with food pieces in it, including both plants and animals (with an emphasis on acorns), and several hearths. The burned bone chips found in the area included: fresh water mussel shells, fish, turtle, birds (especially turkey), deer, black bear, beaver, bobcat, opossum, raccoon, and squirrel. The species were not evenly distributed throughout

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