Why did prehistoric Native Americans fashion the enigmatic objects known as bannerstones?
By Eric A. Powell
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Around 8,000 years ago, in the woodlands of what is now the eastern United States, hunter-gatherers began to make stone objects with holes drilled in them that have no parallel in any other prehistoric society. Today, archaeologists call these highly polished and sometimes elaborate objects “bannerstones.” The name was coined by early twentieth-century scholars who thought they must have been mounted on shafts and used as emblems or ceremonial weapons. But just why they were made only during the so-called Archaic period, which ended around 3,000 years ago, has been debated by archaeologists for more than a hundred years.
http://www.archaeology.org/issues/262-1707/features/5626-native-american-bannerstones
