This ancestor is a birdstone fragment and is grey/green in colour. With high banding spanning its entire body, this ancestor has a broken head but its neck fracture was smoothed. This birdstone also has an incised line around its neck, which might have been used to attach something where the head used to be. Displaying a flat base and raised broad fan tail, this ancestor stands on its belly and is perforated at both ends of its base. This birdstone has vertical notches boarding both the top and bottom of its body and on the sides of its tail. There are a few scratches on this birdstone. The rest of the bird stone is smooth in appearance.  Currently, this ancestor 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, making its origins uncertain.

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

Royal Ontario Museum records