Shell tempered pottery

Mississippian culture pottery is the ceramic tradition of the Mississippian culture (800 to 1600 CE) found as artifacts in archaeological sites in the American Midwest and Southeast. It is often characterized by the adoption and use of riverine (or more rarely marine) shell-tempering agents in the clay paste. Shell tempering is one of the hallmarks of Mississippian cultural practices. Local differences in materials, techniques, forms, and designs are some of the major ways archaeologists understand lifeways, religious practices, trade, and interaction among Mississippian peoples. The value of this pottery on the illegal antiquities market has led to extensive looting of sites.

Mississippian culture pottery was made from locally available clay sources, which often gives archaeologists clues as to where a specific example originated. The clay was then tempered with an additive to keep it from shrinking and cracking in the drying and firing process, usually with ground mussel shells, although in some locations the older tradition of grog tempering, that is, use of crushed up potsherds, persisted into Mississippian times.

The potters used slab-built construction and the "coiling" method, which involved working the clay into a long string which was wound round to form a shape and then modeled to form smooth walls, as the potter's wheel was not used by pre-contact Native Americans. Some decoration of the clay was done at this stage by incising, defenstrating, adding shapes, or stamping designs into the wet clay. After the works had dried sufficiently, it was heated in a wood fire.

Most pottery found at Mississippian sites is of the variety known as "Mississippian Bell Plain." It is buff colored, contains large fragments of ground mussel shell as a tempering agent, and is not as smooth and polished as finer varieties. Higher quality ceramics feature a finer ground shell as a temper – some instances being so finely ground as to look untempered. Extravagant fine serving wares and grave goods were also produced, with some examples exhibiting handles shaped like animal heads and tails or in the shapes of animal or human forms. Women were probably the makers of pottery, as in most other Native American cultures. Archaeologists found 11 polishing pebbles and a mushroom shaped pottery anvil in the grave of a woman at the Nodena Site.

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