The Making of the Nauvoo Sunstones Like human genealogy, the ancestry of the Nauvoo sunstones is complex and its sources in history are ramified. The sunstones’ character as a religious icon depended much on the universality of its imagery. But its authors also relied on known sources which they hoped would reverberate in the minds of early Latter-day Saints. These sources included ancient European heraldry, New England gravestone carving, Roman sculpture, and Freemasonry. Through narrative and a slide presentation, Whittle will present these various traditions constituting the sunstone’s historical context, the ways in which these sources were blended, a brief discussion of the nature of religious symbolism, and a limited review of early Mormon symbology in general.