This ancestor resembles a bird with its downward head and raised tail. It appears to have a squared beak with sharper edges and the top and bottom carved out on one side of its beak. This ancestor does not have eyes carved out and is dark grey in colour with scratches throughout. On one side of the ancestor, there is a thin incised groove stretching from the tail to just below the ancestor’s neck. Beneath it is a dark lamination, there are also two perforations on the bottom of this ancestor, and the front perforation is broken. This ancestor’s base is concave, which makes it slightly unbalanced when it is standing on its own. This birdstone currently resides at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 

The term birdstone is a legacy of earlier archaeological work and does not consider the full variety in shape and functionality these relatives may have had within Indigenous communities. We invite Great Lakes nations to help us improve our understanding of how to identify and name these relatives. Birdstones have been found and collected from various contexts including hearths inside houses, in fields, and burial contexts. To the best of our knowledge, none of the birdstones in GRASAC’s Knowledge Sharing Platform come from burial contexts.  

It is difficult to know the cultural origin of this ancestor due to the unknown context of its collection, its age, and the fact that birdstones have been found throughout the American northeast. It may have travelled long distances.

Information from this entry comes from the ROM's catalogue alongside Dr. Tiziana Gallo's research on Birdstones.

Royal Ontario Museum records