All auctions / Ethnographical / Mississippian Fish Effigy Pottery Bowl with Incised Fins, TL Tested

Oct 15, 2026US

Mississippian Fish Effigy Pottery Bowl with Incised Fins, TL Tested

Native American, Arkansas, Mississippian. An earthenware effigy bowl shaped as an abstract fish, with a long body built around a wide oval mouth. At one end the head narrows to a flattened snout with a small incised eye. At the other a thick, tapering tail ends in a rounded tip that flares only slightly. The bowl does not rest on a ring base. Instead it stands on three short feet modeled as two pectoral fins and one pelvic fin, so the fish seems to hover above the surface it sits on. Applied fillets with fine notches run around the rim and outline the fins and body sections like stitched seams. Finer incised lines trace the inner edges of the fins and form a narrow upright rectangle on the flank. The smoothed gray-brown surface shows soft fire-clouding from the firing. Animal effigy bowls were among the most distinctive ceramic forms of the Mississippian world, especially in the Central Mississippi Valley. Fish, frogs, ducks, and other water creatures appear often in this tradition. In Mississippian cosmology the waters were linked to the Beneath World, a realm of fertility, transformation, and underwater powers. Many effigy bowls place only the head and tail on the rim of a plain bowl. Here the whole vessel is the animal's body, and the fins work as the feet that hold it up. That is a more fully sculptural approach than the usual rim-effigy form. This piece has been tested using thermoluminescence (TL) analysis and has been found to be ancient and of the period stated. A full printed and bound report will accompany the item upon purchase. Item # 203029

Estimate:£678.98

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Mississippian Fish Effigy Pottery Bowl with Incised Fins, TL Tested

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£678.98

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