Plate 20, 21. 
This illustrates two chipped flint objects (Catalog No. 
20X2 and 20X7, provenience unknown) which have been 
variously called maces or batons. Their exact purpose is 
not known. As far as can be learned, there is no record of 
their use in historic times. The depiction of elaborately 
garbed, dancing figures holding such objects, embossed 
on copper or engraved on shell, indicates that their use 
was probably ceremonial or religious rather than practical. 
(See Figure 2 below). 
In excavations in 1971 by the University of Missouri - 
Columbia at the large, fortified Lilbourn site near New 
Madrid, Missouri, a chipped flint object similar to the one 
on the right of Plate 20 was found on the chest of a burial 
of a mature adult male. (See Plate 21). 
According to Waring and Holder (American Anthropologist, 
1945, New Series, 47:1,11) batons, or representations of 
them have been found at Etowah Mounds in Georgia, 
Moundville in Alabama, Spiro Mound in northeastern 
Oklahoma, near New Madrid, Missouri, and in Louisiana 
and Illinois. An example of a wooden baton of similar 
form was found preserved in the muck at Key Marco in 
Florida by Frank Cushing in the late 1890's. 
Figure 2. 4g Drawing Courtesy of Mrs, Eleanor Chapman 
