Three Mississippian Stone Discoidals, Chunkey Game Stones

Native American, Mississippian. Three ground-stone discoidals, each pecked and polished from a different stone. They form a graduated trio. The largest is a broad, rounded disc of pale rose-tan stone with softly domed faces and a smooth, eased rim. The middle example is a compact drum of coarse gray stone, its granular surface showing the patient pecking that shaped it. The smallest is a neat lenticular disc in warm tan, still carrying old collection labels, including one numbered "1249." Objects like these are widely interpreted as chunkey stones. In chunkey, a disc was rolled across a prepared court while players hurled poles toward the spot where they thought it would stop. Three stones, three materials, and three hands that probably never met, all working toward the same rolling form. Chunkey was one of the great spectacles of the Mississippian world. Many scholars link its spread to the rise of Cahokia in the 11th century CE, and it was played in plazas before large crowds. Wagering could be intense, and early European observers in the Southeast recorded that the game was still played into the 18th century. A well-made discoidal took many hours of pecking and grinding, and fine examples may have been kept as valued, perhaps communal, possessions passed down over generations. The game also had a place in Mississippian iconography: shell gorgets and carved stone figures show players in mid-throw holding a stone and pole. Item # 199426

Estimate:$500

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