CATLINITE AND THE SPREAD OF THE CALUMET CEREMONY

In his interpretation of the introduction of the calumet ceremony into the southeastern U.S. in this journal, Brown (1989) has perpetuated a common error that the lithic nickname ''catlinite'' correctly describ es any of the red Plains pipestones from the three well-known midweste rn localities he cites. In truth, the mineralogy of each of the pipe s tones from those three geologic sources (provenances) are distinct fro m one another, and that of catlinite is diagnostic. Although most of t he artifacts he evaluates are probably true catlinite, many of them mi ght not be. Unless archaeologists know of what material an object is m ade, they do not know from where the material originated; thus they ca nnot know who obtained the material nor how the artifact reached its a rchaeological location (provenience).