Flicker Feather "Headdress"
From Scoggin's journal:
…the most unusual object of the dig. The finds each passing day seem to be that, I note, glancing back through the pages. April 2, 1940
One of the most beautiful objects recovered from Mantle's Cave is a flicker feather object resembling a headdress. The headdress is intricately constructed and was found in a buckskin pouch. It is made of flicker feathers, ermine, and buckskin.
More than 370 feathers are in the headdress. Six feathers at the center of the crest are from the yellow-shafted flicker and the rest of the feathers are central tail feathers of the red-shafted flicker. Interestingly, the red-shafted flicker is native west of the Rockies, while the yellow-shafted flicker lives east of the Rockies. The feathers are carefully trimmed and the quills sewn together with very fine cordage. They are placed between strips of ermine and sewn into place. Rawhide thongs at either end of the ermine may have been used to hold the headdress in place when it was worn. Long wing feathers adorn the ends. This artifact also contains two types of cordage: two-ply, S spin, Z twist and two-ply, Z spin, S twist.
The original excavators of Mantle's Cave dubbed this object a headdress, although its use remains uncertain. It dates to 996-1190 A.D. This is the average of two samples from the headdress that were radiocarbon dated (Truesdale 1993). Some researchers believe this is the transitional time period between the Fremont people and Numic-speaking people in this area, so it could have belonged to either cultural group, although the majority of researchers believes it is a Fremont artifact. The headdress is well preserved and hopefully future researchers will be able to discover more about its origin and use.