The Holly Oak Gorget or Holly Oak Pendant is an artifact made from a section of shell that is engraved with the image of an extinct woolly mammoth reportedly found in Holly Oak, Delaware and initially identified as an example of Paleoindian art. Purported to have been a gorget carved during the Pleistocene, this object is now widely believed to be an archaeological forgery. History The Holly Oak Gorget was claimed to have been found in 1864 near the railroad station in Holly Oak. The object was reportedly found by Hilborne T. Cresson in 1864, but was not brought to the attention of the scientific community until December 1889 or the public until February 1890. The supposed discovery of the gorget by Cresson coincides directly with the discovery of another depiction of a woolly mammoth, in France; while excavating the La Madeleine rock shelter in 1864 Édouard Lartet discovered a clear depiction of a woolly mammoth on a fragment of mammoth tusk, providing evidence that humans and mammoths might once have co-existed in Europe. Once the Holly Oak gorget had been introduced to the scientific community and the public at large, the shell was put aside and rarely mentioned in the archaeological literature of the time. It was displayed at the Peabody Museum, the Smithsonian Institution and the International Expositions of Madrid and Chicago before fading from the public eye, only to be resurrected in the 1970s when its authenticity was once again subject to debate. Description The object is a single piece of whelk shell that has an engraving of a mammoth on one surface while the opposite side is undecorated. The shell has two small perforations along one side where a cord would have been strung so as to allow the gorget to be worn around the neck. The depiction of the mammoth is oriented horizontally, along the shell, rather than vertically as is most common. This means that when worn, the mammoth is depicted with the head facing down. It now bears some damage where the object was crushed by a microscope while undergoing tests at the Smithsonian Institution in the late 20th century. Criticism Description of discovery In his original report, Cresson states that the pendant was discovered in a hole being dug in the peat along the Delaware River and across from the Holly Oak station of the railroad, from which the site gets its