page_title: Emmons Cemetery Site
section_title: Emmons mask
hierarchical_section_title: Emmons Cemetery Site / Artifacts / Emmons mask
caption_attribution_description: English: A illustration of the "Emmons mask", a Mississippian culture carved cedarwood human face shaped object once covered in copper and painted with galena and used as part of a headdress. Found in a burial at the Emmons Cemetery Site in Fulton County, Illinois.[1]
context_page_description: The Emmons Cemetery Site, also known as the Emmons Site, is a Middle Mississippian culture archaeological site located in Kerton Township, Fulton County, Illinois, on the edge of a bluff overlooking the Illinois River to its east. The location was a used as a cemetery and several unique and rare items were found interred with the burials.
context_section_description: Another rare object from the site is the Emmons mask, a fairly unusual piece of carved red cedar believed to have been deposited in the grave sometime between 1200–1400 CE. The piece measures 11.9 centimetres (4.7 in) by 9.9 centimetres (3.9 in) by 5.5 centimetres (2.2 in) and was once adorned with sheet copper and paint made from galena, a lead ore. It is shaped like a human face with a crenelated crown-like decoration on its forehead. The paint encircles the eyes and forms two points down on the cheeks, making the forked eye motif, a design imitating the markings of the peregrine falcon and associated with the Chiefly Warrior Cult of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. The piece resembles the small human face that makes up part of the headdress of Malden plate A, an anthropomorphic avian themed Mississippian copper plate found in southeastern Missouri. This copper plate has a birds body but a human head wearing an elaborate headdress which includes what may be feathers and a smaller human face with the distinctive crenelated crown-like structure and a forked eye surround. Archaeologists believe the Emmons mask may in fact be part of such a headdress, and it has holes that would have allowed it to have been attached in such a fashion. A similar piece (including the crenelations) was found at the Etowah site in Georgia, but it is described as a "rattle" and it slightly more resembles the severed heads held by figures on the Rogan plates found at the site by John P. Rogan in the 1880s. A large cache of carved cedar heads was also found in the "Great Mortuary" at Spiro in Oklahoma, although these lack the distinctive crenelations and some of these vary in size enough that some of them may actually be wooden versions of long-nosed god maskette ear decorations. At least three shell engravings from Spiro represent figures wearing similar heads as part of headdresses in the fashion of the figure on Malden plate A. None of the three uses is considered to have been the exclusive use for the objects and the objects may have been used for more than one of these three theories.
caption: Emmons mask, left side reconstructed
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