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Hello there my new Native American artifact collection community! I have been collecting bronze age artifacts, especially weapons for 20+ years. I started collecting Native American stone axes a few years ago. It is my new addiction. I recently acquired this monolithic axe that appears to be authentic. It has stickers on it that confused me at first, but after research I am questioning if it was originally acquired by H. T. Daniels at the Spiro Mounds and then sold to Mr. Renno who purchased many items from him. I am having trouble finding listings or pictures of Rennos collection. Any help I can get is absolutely honored! unfortunately because of the upload limitations the pictures are of poor quality.
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I’ve never viewed a real one in person to be able to actually say what you have there but it will be interesting to see what others say.NW Georgia, -
Welcome to the forum.
I wonder if you realise just how rare that item would be if it were in fact genuine? I can’t help you with the Daniel/Renno connection but anyone with any knowledge of artefacts would not have let it go for anything other than a VERY substantial sum of money and more likely would have put it up for auction where it would have attracted fierce competitive bidding. I’m not saying it’s not genuine, and there’s no way of telling from those pictures, but fakes are considerably more numerous than genuine examples and usually come with an invented provenance. The general form looks good, but the lithic is a bit suspect (most of them are made from darker stone). Someone who knows what they are looking for needs to get it under a ‘scope and look for modern tooling marks and check its patination.
As far as I know there are only about 25 properly documented intact examples of this artefact type (plus a number of fragmentary ones) from the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, of which 6 came from the Spiro mounds. They were found within a log tomb in Craig Mound (the ‘Great Temple’ Mound; site 34Lf40) between 1933 and 1935 by the Pocola Mining Company; a small group of individuals who excavated the mounds prior to excavations by the University of Oklahoma. Most of them were encrusted/patinated with a heavy rust-colored iron deposit. The current whereabouts of these (and most of the others that have been found) is known and generally they’re within museums, not private collections.
You should get this examined by a professional authenticator, but I have to say that the chances of it being authentic are really very slim.I keep six honest serving-men (they taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.Comment
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There were 17 specimens found at various southeast sites from Tenn. to Georgia, including one chipped flint example found with the Duck River cache. These are also all accounted for and in museum collections. These are very restricted to what lithics were used, most being a greenstone, which is actually a green diorite. A few banded slate examples, a few solid blue/gray slate examples, one somewhat of a porphyry example, and a couple were polished limestone. The one pictured here really looks like solid onyx that was buffed and stained to look old. The typology may be close on this example, but I would bet under close scrutiny, it would be loaded with modern grinding marks, and it already lacks any visible patina. I handled one authentic example in my lifetime, and it was encrusted with dark organic material, as well as covered with caliche deposits. And yes, it sold for a VERY substantial amount, but the provenance took it back to the late 1880s when it was found in a mound in Ga.This is the only one I know of in a private collection, although there may be a few more, but only a few, if authentic. -
As far as who to send to that would give you a reputable opinion, pieces of paper, authentification papers, are always only opinions. In fact, you are getting very good observations, for free, right here. You can take it to the bank that your monolithic axe is a reproduction in fact. There are authenticators who will tell you it's genuine, just because that's what all collectors want to hear about their purchases. Personally, I would not waste my money trying to "prove" something with a paper, simply because you are getting good opinions here, and a paper won't change things, unless you want one that says it's real. Some authenticators will accommodate you that way. I am reluctant to get into a discussion of good and bad authenticators here.
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You might also be interested in this extract from "Looting Spiro Mounds: An American King Tut's Tomb" by David La Vere.
Daniel was exposed as a faker of Spiro artefacts and ultimately admitted to it.
I keep six honest serving-men (they taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.Comment
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There was one found north of me in Georgia and a buyer in Texas bought it a few years ago. I don’t know anything more than that and no names were mentioned and I didn’t askNW Georgia,Comment
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How and where could I send to for an honest evaluation???Comment
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Laser authentification, which Insight uses, is controversial. I would read this:
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Thanks Jethro for your confidence, I would look at this for him, but I'm not sure he would accept an experienced opinion. I think he has it in his mind that it's authentic, and I'm at about 99.9999% sure it isn't. And I'm looking at the material. which appears to be onyx, or a big slab of calcite, and it also looks tea stained with maybe a few places someone darkened with heat, maybe from some light passes with a propane torch. And the labels aren't the old red ones vintage from the year this would have been found. They're are fairly new, and can bought in packs on any website site that sells paper goods. And Roger has pointed out in black and white all the forgeries Daniels was handling. But it's up to him.
Something else that bothers me when I see these old labels. If Daniels had this, knowing it's a forgery, but passing it off as authentic, you would really expect to see much better fine, cursive,Italic calliigraphic writing, not a crude printing of his name. That in itself doesn't mean a piece is bad, but it does raise a lot of red flags and adds to the skepticism. And anyone could get Daniels name associated with these from the internet.Last edited by pkfrey; 10-16-2019, 09:15 AM.
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As the others have mentioned, it's the wrong style and the wrong material for a Monolithic axe from Spiro. I have never seen an example of that style change hands, but my guess would be there would be a couple of collectors willing to spend $250,000+ for a documented, authentic example.
Both names are valid names of collectors and dealers of relics, but they are also pretty easy to write on a sticker.
It's interesting that they are essentially the rarest of the rare artifact type in the US, but a couple hundred miles away in the Caribbean they are relatively common. I've found two. A miniature example (the most common type) and a broken full size example. I know serious collectors there who have found multiple examples.
Last edited by clovisoid; 10-16-2019, 01:16 AM.Hong Kong, but from Indiana/FloridaComment
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