Hixon Site, Tennessee
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Notes:
In any case, this is an example from east Tennessee of the anthropomorphic form characteristic of the Hightower style best known at Etowah. Most students of these forms place them in last half of the 13th century or in the first half of the 14th century at the latest. Formerly identified as an "eagle warrior" because of substitution of talons for either hands or feet, certain of the "wing" elements are now seen as likely to be derived from large nocturnal moths.
Such revisions of interpretation should again give us pause about the "rush to judgment" about the meaning of motifs in cases for which meanings were almost certainly purposefully ambiguous.
Religious art all over the world uses a kind of visual punning to superimpose images that simultaneously "stand" for a broad range of referents. Given the likely symbolic content of these gorgets, we are very naive if we expect to "read" them in any straight-forward, linear fashion.
The proper answer to the question of whether these "wings" are either "bird" or "moth" symbols may very well be "yes"!