Visualizing the Sacred: Cosmic Visions, Regionalism, and the Art of the Mississippian World (Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies)

by George E. Lankford

The substitution of the swirl-cross occurs at the center of those gorgets. I read the center as the column which has the sun at the top and the fire on the earth, symbolized particularly by rayed circle motifs and the cross.