Native American Indians Art Life

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www.migleindesigns.com

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CONTENT NATIVE AMERICAN INDIANS Native North American art Northwest Coast House types Central gable roof Shed-roof Southern gableroof

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INDIANS

Native Nor American a

This tree grows to great size, and its wood is easily split, light and durable. Beyond the range of red cedar to the north, spruce and hemlock were used, and to the south redwood. When Europeans first arrived in the late 18th century, Northwest Coast produced the huge planks.

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Northwest Coast

In a region characterized by temperate maritime climate, rich marine resources and dense rain-forests, Northwest Coast peoples developed a highly skilled woodworking technology, capable of producing seagoing dugout canoes and great plank houses. The construction of their dwellings was influenced by their cultural emphasis on the acquisition and display of wealth; their division of society into nobles, commoners and slaves; and their spectacular ceremonies and highly developed art. The plank house was the most distinctive feature of Northwest Coast material culture and a pre House types. requisite to several other basic features—economic, social and aesthetic. It was not only a dwelling—its form and functions relating to the social group that occupied it—but also, in a wet climate, a food-processing and storage plant. Further, the house served as a stage for public ceremonies and as a medium for the display of symbols of privilege and power.

The plank house and its complement the canoe, required by the yearly round of movements to and from fishing, hunting and gathering sites, were both important integral elements of Northwest Coast culture.

Throughout most of the area the material commonly used was western red cedar (Thuja plicata). This tree grows to great size, and its wood is easily split, light and durable. Beyond the range of red cedar to the north, spruce and hemlock were used, and to the south redwood. When Europeans first arrived in the late 18th century, Northwest Coast peoples already had some iron, but most of their woodworking tools were of stone, bone, antler and shell.

With these they produced the huge planks that determined the rectangular shape of the house. The Northwest Coast house consisted of a framework of posts and beams, a roof and walls of planks, and, inside, a bed platform extending around the walls, with food-drying racks suspended from the beams. It was usually occupied by several families, each with its own space.

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Throughout most of the area the material commonly used was western red cedar (Thuja plicata). This tree grows to great size, and its wood is easily split, light and durable. Beyond the range of red cedar to the north, spruce and hemlock were used, and to the south redwood.

Native American art, also called Indian art or American Indian art, the visual art of the aboriginal inhabitants of the Americas, often called American Indians.

ook llings t n e w d n o a Americ , depending r North s e m h t r o o f us and numero ental, social re p m rom environ hey range f f stone T o factors. uildings made r portab ary o manent tempor the tepee. o t e b o and ad ures, such as e sses th ct ble stru le also discu r e h t rtic and o This a ch buildings r e n su nial, fu . o m e r use of e urposes es for c structur ge and other p ra ary, sto

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indians The household consisted of permanent members— the families of the house head, his brothers and others holding positions in his cognatic kin group, and temporary members, such as the families of relatives without positions, who might move on if the fortunes of the house declined.

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House types

Na Am

Houses were built in several regional types, varying in the form of the roof, attachment of wall planks, excavation of the floor, number of hearths and other features. In the early 19th century gable (two-pitched) roofs were usual everywhere along the coast except for a region of shed (single-pitched) roofs in southern British Columbia and northern Washington state. In the north, wall planks were fitted into an outer frame. In a central region, including the southern part of the northern gable-roof region and shed-roof region, wall planks were slung horizontally, separate from the frame holding the roof, and easily removed. And in the southern region of gable-roof houses, wall planks were set vertically into the ground and helped to support the roof. Removing planks from the winter house for use at summer sites was practised widely but most easily done in the central region. Roof form and wall attachment thus define four major house types: a northern gable-roof house with fitted wall planks; a central gable-roof house with loose wall planks; a shed-roof with loose wall planks; and a southern gable-roof house with sunken wall planks. Each type coincides with a different form of social organization and cultural practices.

Other house types of restricted distribution include the Bella Coola house with a huge false front, the Puget Sound gambrel- (or mansard-) roof house with a nearly flat central roof and four steeper slopes extending away from it and the north-western California rich man’s house with a three-pitch roof—a gable roof with the peak truncated at an angle. By the late 19th century the traditional hand-hewn planks and cedar-withe ropes were replaced nearly everywhere by milled boards and nails. For a time, the internal plan remained the same, but in a few decades the old-style houses were abandoned for single-family frame houses.

ative North merican art Central gable roof This type was used by the Kwakiutl, Northern and Central Nootkans and some Northern Coast Salish.

Its central framework consisted either of four posts supporting two long beams that served as a double ridge-pole, or of three posts—two at the front topped with a lintel and one at the rear—supporting a single ridge-pole. A set of smaller posts on each side supported smaller beams holding the eaves.

The walls consisted of planks tied horizontally, overlapping, between pairs of vertical poles; they were quite separate from the frame, which served only to support the roof. The floor was usually not excavated. There were usually several hearths with smoke-holes made by shifting the roof planks above them.

Indigenous architecture appeared early in the Southwest culture area.

While the region has topographical variety, it is marked by an overall climatic aridity.

In he late 18th century houses of this type were often much longer than wide, stood parallel to the shore and had nearly flat roofs. By the late 19th century, Kwakiutl houses were built more like Northern houses—nearly square, with the gable end facing the shore.

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INDIANS Indigenous architecture appeared early in the Southwest culture area.

While the region has topographical variety, it is marked by an overall climatic aridity. When the indigenous peoples became sedentary agriculturalists (see §I, 2(i) above), they built permanent houses for residential purposes.

Northern gable roof Used by the Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Haisla and Heiltsuk, this type was nearly square in plan, 10–18 m on each side. A gable end faced the shore, with the entrance in the centre. The interior of a chief’s house was often excavated, with two or more levels of planked floors. There was a single central hearth on the lowest level and a single permanent smoke-hole in the peak of the roof above it. Strips of bark weighted by stones often substituted for roof planks. At some sites, as along rivers with steep banks and seasonal flooding, houses were built with their rear ends set into the hillside and their fronts supported by pilings or cribworks of logs.

The most common subtype, the two-beam version, had a central framework of four posts and two long beams to support crossbeams and a single or double ridge-pole; and an outer framework of four corner posts, often with posts at the centre of each side as well, all connected by plates and sills. The wall planks were fitted either horizontally or vertically into slots in the outer frame. The front and rear gable plates or bargeboards rose to the peak of the roof. The roof was supported at the peak by the central frame and bargeboards, and at the eaves by the corner posts and side plates. In Tlingit and Tsimshian houses the rear of the house, opposite the door, was often screened off as the living compartment of the house chief, and sometimes his younger brothers had screened rooms at the sides.

Northwest Coast, reconstruction of a Haida six-beam house, previously on…A late Southern Haida subtype, the six-beam version (see fig.), had no central frame. Posts at the four corners, a pair at the centre of the front and another pair at the centre of the rear were connected by plates and sills. The gable plates supported six long beams, which supported the roof and projected beyond the roof at the front and rear. The plates and sills were carefully mortised into the posts, and the wall planks were fitted vertically into slots in the plates and sills, the whole forming a strong yet open structure. Usually a tall carved pole with a circular entrance stood in the centre of the front, flanked by the posts holding the plates, and a carved post was installed inside between the pair of posts at the centre of the rear wall.

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Haida house fronts were less often painted, a frontal pole serving to display the crests instead.

T h e northern household might consist of the house head, his younger brothers, his sisters’ grown sons, the wives and minor children of these men and his slaves. The head’s family occupied the upper level at the rear, his brothers the sides and lower-ranking persons the lower level by the fire. This household, with its hierarchical structure and single hearth, was a close-knit social group, its adult free males being members of the same matrilineal line. For ceremonial events, the excavated house of a chief served as an amphitheatre, with guests and hosts seated according to lineage membership and rank.

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INDIANS

Native Nor American a

In winter the walls were lined with mats and family sections wholly enclosed with mats. Some Coast Salish shed-roof houses were up to 20 m wide and 200 m long. These longer structures were divided by plank partitions into segments and might be better identified as rows of houses sharing common walls.

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Central gable-roof

This type was used by the Kwakiutl, Northern and Central Nootkans and some Northern Coast Salish. Its central framework consisted either of four posts supporting two long beams that served as a double ridge-pole, or of three posts—two at the front topped with a lintel and one at the rear—supporting a single ridge-pole. A set of smaller posts on each side supported smaller beams holding the eaves. The walls consisted of planks tied horizontally, overlapping, between pairs of vertical poles; they were quite separate from the frame, which served only to support the roof. The floor was usually not excavated.

There were usually several hearths with smoke-holes made by shifting the roof planks above them.

In the late 18th century houses of this type were often much longer than wide, stood parallel to the shore and had nearly flat roofs. By the late 19th century, Kwakiutl houses were built more like Northern houses—nearly square, with the gable end facing the shore, a steeper roof, the walls more solidly attached and a projecting deck.

The household consisted of permanent members—the families of the house head, his brothers and others holding positions in his cognatic kin group, and temporary members, such as the families of relatives without positions, who might move on if the fortunes of the house declined. In the Nootkan house the permanent families lived in the corners, which were ranked in value, while the temporary residents occupied spaces between. House posts were decorated with carvings and façades with paintings representing animals or other beings standing in a special relationship to the kin group, as ancestors or their non-human protectors. By the mid-19th century the Kwakiutl were also erecting separate memorial poles.

Shed-roof This type was used by most of the Coast Salish of the Strait of Georgia–Puget Sound region and by the Nitinaht, Makah and Quileute on the outer coast. It was generally oblong and built parallel to the shore. Pairs of posts were set in the ground in two rows of unequal height. Usually each pair of posts held a crossbeam, and these supported stringers, which supported the roof planks, laid on parallel to the crossbeams and often interlocking like tiles.

rth art The walls, floor and hearths were as in the central gable-roof house.

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INDIANS

Native Nor American a

These massed, communal buildings were later termed ‘Pueblos’ (‘towns’) by the first Spanish explorers.

The principles by which they were constructed, including their environmentally suitable relationship to the landscape

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) Southern gableroof

Used by the Quinault and other Coast Salish of south-western Washington, by the Chinookan tribes of the lower Columbia River and by the tribes of the Oregon Coast and of north-western California, this type commonly had a floor excavated to a depth approaching the height of the walls. The wall planks were set vertically into the ground, the ridge-pole was supported by central posts, and the roof planks were laid parallel to the ridge-pole and held in place by poles running from ridge-pole to eaves. Some houses built by the Chinookans were over 100 m long, but most southern houses were relatively small. The longer houses were built parallel to the shore and had multiple hearths. The household was composed of the families of men related through the male line, led by a wealthy headman. In the Lower Columbia River region, carvings representing guardian spirits (two surviving examples in New York, Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist.) were executed on house posts and on boards set up before the beds of shamans. A late 18th-century explorer reported doorways made to represent huge mouths. Decorated houses are not reported far south of the Columbia River. .

Indigenous architecture appeared early in the Southwest culture area. While the region has topographical variety, it is marked by an overall climatic aridity.

When the indigenous peoples became sedentary agriculturalists (see §I, 2(i) above), they built permanent houses for residential purposes. These massed, communal buildings were later termed ‘Pueblos’ (‘towns’) by the first Spanish explorers. The principles by which they were constructed, including their environmentally suitable relationship to the landscape and passive solar heating properties, are an enduring architectural legacy.

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Before European contact

The prehistoric Southwest was home to three dominant cultural groups: the Mogollon of south-western New Mexico and central Arizona, the Hohokam of central Arizona and the Anasazi of the Colorado Plateau and along the Rio Grande and its tributaries.

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INDIANS The Hohokam of the desert valleys of central Arizona employed extensive canal irrigation and interacted with neighbouring Sinagua, Salado and Anasazi groups. Sonoran influence can be seen in Arizona in the settlement patterns and construction of Casa Grande (c.

AD 1350窶田. 1450) and Snaketown, the latter site occupied continuously for nearly 700 years (c. AD 300窶田.)

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Before European contact

Na Am

The prehistoric Southwest was home to three dominant cultural groups: the Mogollon of south-western New Mexico and central Arizona, the Hohokam of central Arizona and the Anasazi of the Colorado Plateau and along the Rio Grande and its tributaries. The first form of residential structure, the pithouse, was common to the Mogollon and Anasazi cultures. The earliest pithouses were Mogollon and date before c. AD 100. Pithouses were excavated into the ground, from 0.60 to 1.8 m in depth, with a circular, rectangular or ovoid floorplan. Walls were made with a framework of brush and twigs and covered with mud. Most pithouses had one or more centre posts to support the roof, and beams were laid over the posts to carry the earth-covered roof elements. The interior was a single room with a fire pit, deflector slabs and, particularly in Anasazi construction, a sipapu, a small ceremonial hole that represented the passageway from the underworld. Entry to the dwelling was by the smokehole, although some pithouses were built with an enclosed vestibule or passageway, a device that was later modified into a ventilator shaft c. AD 450.

Interior earthen walls were lined with upright stone slabs or had cribbed-log braces. The pithouse form contained useful thermal properties and gradually became standardized in most areas. By c. AD 700窶田. 850, however, building emphasis had shifted to above-ground, contiguously walled, free-standing communal dwelling units, sited in the open or against cliff walls.

ative North merican art Most pithouses had one or more centre posts to support the roof, and beams were laid over the posts to carry the earth-covered roof elements.

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INDIANS

Native Nor American a

Hohokam houses were not pithouses but had excavated floors with wattle-and-daub on framework walls. As Hohokam settlements grew, they acquired several features that point to Mesoamerican origins: enclosed compounds, platform mounds and ritual ballcourts.

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De Lancey W. Gill: Street in the Pueblo of Zuni,…For about the next 140 years, Pueblo Native American architecture was influenced by the Spanish conquerors, and this was still true in the 1880s, when ethnographic records of building styles began (see fig.). The Spaniards taught the Pueblos how to manufacture adobe bricks of mud with a straw binder, moulded into forms. In the eastern pueblos moulded adobe bricks were used in masonry style, while in the western pueblos wet adobe was preferred, being used as mortar and plaster.

Franciscan missionaries used Pueblo Native American labour to construct the first churches in the region, but did not attempt to teach European methods of stone construction.

The Pueblo Native Americans incorporated new European architectural ideas without abandoning their traditional construction or spatial practices. Much indigenous architecture was preserved by the Spanish colonists’ refusal to live among the natives: many traditional methods continued to be used into the 19th and 20th centuries and can be seen in the new Hopi towns of Hotevilla, Bacavi and Moenkopi in Arizona. Nevertheless, with the end of the need for defensive positioning, pueblos acquired more windows and doors, using such imported building materials as milled lumber, and more free-standing individual houses were built. In New Mexico, Taos Pueblo’s two house-blocks most closely resemble building before the Spanish Conquest, but the modern pueblos are an amalgam of traditional and acculturated forms.

Native American labour to construct the first churches in the region, but did not attempt to teach European methods of stone construction.

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European influence The pueblos encountered by Spanish conquistadors upon their arrival in the Southwest in the mid-16th century were the result of the transitional ‘regressive’ phase. The newcomers found small communal adobe and sandstone towns, built in clusters with connecting roof-top and interior passageways.

The Pueblo Native American groups used their living spaces efficiently, utilizing areas for water and grain storage, and other areas for work, social and ceremonial activities. Acoma and Old Oraibi Pueblos vie for the title of ‘oldest continually occupied town’ in the USA.

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INDIANS

Native Nor American a

They served as a supply base in preparation for surprise raids on enemy camps.

Sweat lodges were made for taking steambaths, frequently with ritual overtones. Such a lodge consisted of a domeshaped frame of branches.

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Other structure

Round grass houses were used on the south-eastern Plains. Their ‘gothic’ dome shapes, about 4.5 m high, were formed by a bent frame of long flexible poles tied together at the top. Four of the poles were somewhat longer than the others, their top sections extending towards the four cardinal directions, symbolizing the gods of the four world quarters. Horizontal rods encircled the frame at intervals, and the whole was carefully covered with grass thatch. Sleeping platforms were constructed around the inside of the wall. Grass houses were from 4.5 to 9 m in diameter and were occupied by a number of related families.

Several groups in the eastern Prairies lived in mat- or bark-covered domeshaped lodges as used in the adjoining Woodlands region (see §4 below). Such lodges were c. 3 m high, up to 30 m long and c. 5.5 m wide.

Other structures erected by Native American Plains groups included small bark- or brush-covered conical shelters made by war parties at secluded locations in enemy territory. These were large enough to accommodate ten to twelve warriors and sufficiently strong to provide protection in case of an attack. They served as a supply base in preparation for surprise raids on enemy camps. Sweat lodges were made for taking steam-baths, frequently with ritual overtones. Such a lodge consisted of a dome-shaped frame of branches, c. 1.4 m high, covered with buffalo skins or blankets. The floor was covered with sage grass, except for a hole in the centre, in which hot stones were placed. The bather(s) crouched inside and sprinkled water on the stones to create steam in the airtight hut.

In late prehistoric times (i.e. just before European contact) the use of burial mounds spread from the south-east Woodlands region northward as far as Manitoba. The use of small versions survived up to early historic times among the agricultural communities in the lower Missouri region. Prevailing throughout the Plains, however, was the use of scaffolds and trees for burial practices; and among the nomadic hunters the tepee served as a burial lodge for important individuals.

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A shrine and bed benches were situated opposite the entrance, along the outer wall of the peripheral space, which also contained storages for food, firewood, garden tools and a small horse corral. Most of the winter supply of food was stored in pits lined with split logs and grass, dug in the ground outside the lodge. Several related nuclear families inhabited a single such dwelling, which had a lifespan from ten to twenty years. The parts of the earth lodge and of the tepee were related to cosmic symbolism. The conical or dome-shaped wall of the earth lodge represented the sky, which was believed to rest as a dome upon the earth, symbolized by the floor of the lodge. Tepee poles and rafters linked earth and sky, and they symbolized the trails along which the prayers of the people reached the spirits. Entrances faced east, towards the sunrise, heralding the day and new life. Widespread in North America, this symbolism of the lodge as a microcosm played a role in the rituals performed within them.

The floor was covered with sage grass, except for a hole in the centre, in which hot stones were placed.

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INDIANS Within every Mississippian polity, ritual and exchange, as well as some level of economic and political control, were held by the ĂŠlite members of one or a few lineages; together, mound, structure, space and artefact functioned as hierarchical symbols reflecting the socially unifying role of ritual.

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Mississippi–Late Woodland

Na Am

After AD 1200, at numerous sites on the fertile river bottom terraces throughout the south-east Woodlands and along the lower Ohio and Missouri river valleys, Mississippian societies built large towns surrounding sets of normally square or rectangular, flat-topped (and often steeply ramped) mounds, on which stood temples or civic buildings, oriented to the cardinal directions. At a few large Mississippian sites, such as Cahokia across from St Louis, there were numerous plazas formed by pyramidal temple mounds along with conical mounds and long, ridged mounds containing ĂŠlite burials. There were also circles more than 100 m across, composed of large wooden posts, the largest of which cast shadows demarcating summer or winter solstice sunrise along the faces or edges of particular mounds. Many such isolated wooden posts were also set as gnomons in or adjacent to the large cleared plazas about which most Mississippian towns were planned or grew. While a few large and unusual ramped helical mounds supporting temples or charnel houses appear to have been conceived and constructed as a single project, most mounds were built and rebuilt, layer upon layer, over a complex series of public ritual spaces and/or structures. In the southern Appalachians, Mississippian temples and council houses were often rebuilt into towering mounds over partially subterranean structures.

Unlike earlier sacred religious buildings, all such Mississippian mound and temple structures were built by organized group effort. Although the use and display of their sacred and civic contents may have been restricted to particular individuals, these mounds represent fully corporate icons.

ative North merican art This sacred or civic architecture and sense of space is quite different from that seen at the few excavated non-ceremonial Hopewell sites, where a few houses.

Villages of huge, randomly placed multi-family earth lodges were built

by Missouri River Valley farmers (see ยง3 above).

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INDIANS There, along Bayou Maçon, a huge series of earthworks covers nearly 20 ha with fiveeighths of an octagon composed of from four to six discontinuous concentric ridges over 3 m high (the rest may have eroded away).

Most of the dates from this site suggest that the earthworks were built over several generations between c.

1100 and c. 800 BC, although at least one of the adjoining mounds is probably more recent.

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Archaic

Na Am

Little is known concerning even domestic structures at any archaeological site before c. 4500 BC. Only the scattered remains in rock shelters and traces of hunting sites and quarries survive from apparently mobile peoples who followed retreating glaciers into the Woodlands region, though they unquestionably had weatherproof shelters of some kind. No Palaeo-Native American site with evidence for public or ceremonial architecture or space is known in the Woodlands. Distribution of tools and chipping debris suggests that most domestic sites were diffuse occupations by three to five nuclear families, each using a living area c. 20 m in diameter, each such area being about 20 m from the next. The few early sites to yield architectural evidence contain only mundane structures. In the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC at the Wapanuckett No. 6 site in Massachusetts and the Koster Farm site in the lower Illinois Valley, two to six small domestic structures were occupied for much of each year by a single extended family of localized hunter–gatherers.

At both sites oval houses, c. 4×5 m with central open hearths, were built of single-set wooden posts, probably tied together at their tops. At other, coeval sites throughout the region, fragmentary remains suggest that this was the common plan.

Most ritual or civic use of space during the 1st millennium BC was apparently unplanned. Fishing and gathering peoples on many of the South Atlantic coastal islands lived on uniformly sized and shaped annular and penannular shell middens, 20–30 m in diameter, with what are taken to be deliberately cleaned central plazas. While a few post-hole remains have been identified, the size and shape of the houses is unknown. By c. 500 BC, on several island sites off the Georgia coast, repetitive interments in restricted areas led to the creation of low sand and shell mounds over multi-family burials of the Deptford culture.

In much the same way, in the Midwest and Great Lakes region between c. 1200 and c. 400 BC, the ritual burial of generations of presumptive lineage leaders in particular gravel knolls and glacial kames (conical hills of glacial deposits formed at the edge of the ice sheet) resulted in the creation of less than impressive artificial burial mounds.

ative North merican art The earliest and one of the most imposing planned ceremonial sites in the eastern Woodlands is the Poverty point site in north-eastern Louisiana.

There, along Bayou Maçon, a huge series of earthworks covers nearly 20 ha with five-eighths of an octagon composed of from four to six discontinuous concentric ridges over 3 m high (the rest may have eroded away). Most ritual or civic use of space during the 1st millennium BC was apparently unplanned. Fishing and gathering peoples on many of the South Atlantic coastal islands lived on uniformly sized and shaped annular and penannular shell middens, 20–30 m in diameter, with what are taken to be deliberately cleaned central plazas.

While a few post-hole remains have been identified, the size and shape of the houses is unknown.

By c. 500 BC, on several island sites off the Georgia coast, repetitive interments in restricted areas led to the creation of low sand and shell mounds over multi-family burials of the Deptford culture.

Few post-holes or hearths have been found on these imposing walls.

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INDIANS In southern Ohio and in Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and in north-western Florida sites that participated in the exchange of Hopewell ritual iconography and objects, there were rectangular flat-topped mounds within discontinuous square enclosures, some with ramped graded ways from the enclosure to the river edge.

Adena窶滴opewell

While a few houses and simple mounds of earth over burials are known from the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC, domestic and sacred architectural structures and spaces became common during the succeeding Woodland periods. In the Ohio and Tennessee river valleys conical burial mounds, such as Grave Creek, West Virginia, or theAdena mound in Ohio, were up to 22 m high, in an annular or penannular ditch and embankment 50 m or more across. Below such characteristic Early Woodland (c.1000窶田. 100 BC) mounds, tombs had been placed within circular paired sets of out-slanted wooden posts, but whether the structures represented were roofed or not, and whether they reflect domestic as well as mortuary architecture, is unclear. In Kentucky an intermittent ditch and over 12,000 posts enclosed the free-form Peter Site, where ritually important minerals were mined.

Vast free-form ditches and stone-revetted embankments also enclosed Hopewell sites on plateaux and hilltops in southern Ohio (c. 100 BC窶田. AD 500; see Hopewell mounds). But far more impressive were the vast, regular geometric enclosures forming connected and isolated squares and octagons with small conical mounds at breaks in the walls. There were open and closed circles and ellipses, and additional sets of parallel earthen walls having open or closed ends of various shapes, many with celestially significant orientations. Within these enclosures many Hopewell mounds in Ohio and many related Middle Woodland (c. 100 BC窶田. AD 500) mounds in the Southeast were built over series of complex ritual spaces and wooden post structures, often reflecting the earthwork motifs. Further, within many of the conical burial mounds of the Middle Woodland period, structures had stood and rituals were performed on flat earthen platforms. Some of these were later incorporated into other such platforms, and most finally incorporated into a conical or loaf-shaped mound.

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At the same time, along the islands off the south Florida Gulf Coast, dense populations were beginning to live in such communities as Key marco, where conch and whelk shell middens were combined into house platforms and built into dikes, canals and boat slips.

The construction of Adena or Hopewellian mounds and related ritual spaces and buildings, and the acquisition, distribution and disposal of material and artefacts, represented competitive personal achievement by the leaders of socially equivalent family groups. The acquisition of many exotic materials and artefacts, and perhaps awareness of their complex iconographic significance, were probably restricted to those particular participants.

This sacred or civic architecture and sense of space is quite different from that seen at the few excavated non-ceremonial Hopewell sites, where a few randomly placed secular houses show a simple rectangular or square plan (sides 4–6 m), each with one or two hearths for a single nuclear or extended family. Built of closely placed, single-set wooden posts, with several larger internal support posts, they probably had some form of gabled roof.

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In the lower Mississippi Valley, multistaged Hopewellian mounds stood within large semicircular earthen community charnel houses.

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INDIANS Open-sided, palmetto-thatched rectangular houses on stilts served small families of ancient Native Americans in the deep south, while along the lower Great Lakes and St Lawrence River generations of matrilocal families lived down the partitioned centres of nearly airtight, bark-covered arched-roof houses as much as 8 m high and 35 m long.

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Mississippi–Late Woodland

Na Am

After AD 1200, at numerous sites on the fertile river bottom terraces throughout the south-east Woodlands and along the lower Ohio and Missouri river valleys, Mississippian societies built large towns surrounding sets of normally square or rectangular, flat-topped (and often steeply ramped) mounds, on which stood temples or civic buildings, oriented to the cardinal directions. At a few large Mississippian sites, such as Cahokia across from St Louis, there were numerous plazas formed by pyramidal temple mounds along with conical mounds and long, ridged mounds containing élite burials. There were also circles more than 100 m across, composed of large wooden posts, the largest of which cast shadows demarcating summer or winter solstice sunrise along the faces or edges of particular mounds. Many such isolated wooden posts were also set as gnomons in or adjacent to the large cleared plazas about which most Mississippian towns were planned or grew. While a few large and unusual ramped helical mounds supporting temples or charnel houses appear to have been conceived and constructed as a single project, most mounds were built and rebuilt, layer upon layer, over a complex series of public ritual spaces and/or structures. In the southern Appalachians, Mississippian temples and council houses were often rebuilt into towering mounds over partially subterranean structures. Unlike earlier sacred religious buildings, all such Mississippian mound and temple structures were built by organized group effort. Although the use and display of their sacred and civic contents may have been restricted to particular individuals, these mounds represent fully corporate icons. Within every Mississippian polity, ritual and exchange, as well as some level of economic and political control, were held by the élite members of one or a few lineages; together, mound, structure, space and artefact functioned as hierarchical symbols reflecting the socially unifying role of ritual.

Although the spatial arrangement of houses within towns and villages and the layout of settlements changed in response to economic and ceremonial demands, from c.AD 1200, virtually all the regional varieties of domestic architecture that persisted in the eastern Woodlands until European contact had been developed. Villages of huge, randomly placed multi-family earth lodges were built by Missouri River Valley farmers (see §3 above).

ative North merican art At Hopewellian-related sites in the mid-south, similar square houses and clay-plastered circular houses of equal area appear to represent both summer and winter use of the sites.

While few burial mounds in the northern Woodlands postdate the Middle Woodland period, along the upper Mississippi River there are fields of from five to fifty low mounds, 10–20 m long, in the form of birds, mammals and reptiles, usually with a single burial at the head or heart. There are no materials of secure archaeological provenance from the base of the 100-m long coiled Great Serpent Mound on a high ridge in southern Ohio , but fragments of domestic ceramics (Columbus, OH, Hist. Soc.) in its upper layers suggest that it too was constructed in the cultural hiatus between the Hopewellian and Mississippian florescences.

Equally widespread were the changes in location and defensive posture of sites in response to the climatic.

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Bibliography

Native North American art B. Fagan: In the Beginning: An Introduction to Archaeology (Boston, 1972); rev. as Introduction to American Archaeology (San Francisco, 1992) W. N. Morgan: Prehistoric Architecture of the Eastern United States (Cambridge, MA, 1980) D. S. Brose, J. A. Brown and D. W. Penney: Ancient Art of the American Woodland Indians (New York, 1985) J. D. Jennings: Ancient North Americans (New York, 1990) B. D. Smith: Rivers of Change (Washington, DC, 1992) David S. Brose

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www.migleindesigns.com

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