Effigy mound Mounds built in the forms of animals.

Gorget Neck pendant

Burial Mask

from Point Hope, Alaska

ca. 100ivory9 1/2 in. wide

Favorite material of Eskimo carvers? Was Walrus ivory.

Stylistic characteristics of prehistoric Eskimo art:

Abstract circles, curved lines, and animal faces (representing transformation) are common motifs, carved in shallow relief.

Objects are always small due to the nomadic culture.

Ancestral Shrine Figure, 13th–14th century; MississippianMississippian peoples; TennesseeQuartz sandstone H. 26 1/2 in. (67.3 cm)

Pipe

from a mound in Ohio

ca 500-1 B.C.E.stone8 in. high

Purpose of most of the Adena and Mississippian art objects:

Gifts to the dead, to be taken into the afterlife.

Incised shell gorget

from Summer County, Tennessee

ca. 1250-13004 in. wide

Serpent MoundAdams County, Ohioca. 10701200 ft. long, 20 ft. wide, 5 ft. high

The Adena culture which flourished in Ohio during the last several centuries BCE were thought to have built the mounds. Radiocarbon dating, however, now suggests it was built much later by a people known as Mississippians.

The mound is 1200 feet long

The purpose for the construction of the mound:

To represent or worship snakes, which were very important in Mississippian iconography. They were associated with the earth and fertility of crops.

Because it is now thought to have been built in 1070, it may have been intended to mark the passage of Halley’s comet in 1066, in the form of the comet’s path across the night sky.

Most extant objects from the Adena and Mississippian cultures were found in burial and temple mounds.The Serpent Mound, Ohio is among the best preserved temple mounds

bowl with two cranes and geometric formsfrom New Mexicoca. 1250ceramic, black on whitediameter approximately 1 ft. 1/2 in.

Characteristics of prehistoric pottery made by the Mimbres people:

Black-on-white designs.

Linear rhythms balanced and controlled with a clearly defined border.

Method used to make this pottery was the coiling method.

Cliff Palace at Mesa Verdi

The Cliff Palace at Mesa Verdi was a sophisticated urban community located in a wide trade network. The location was not accidental. The dwellings were designed to take advantage of the sun to heat the pueblo in winter and shade it in summer.

A kivaA circular semi-subterranean structure, once roofed over and entered via ladder through a hole in the roof.

PurposeThey were and still are the spiritual centers of native Southwest life, male council houses where ritual regalia are stored and private rituals and preparations for public ceremonies take place.

detail of Kiva painting

from Kuaua Pueblo (Coranado State Monument) Anasazi, New Mexico

late 15th to early 16th century

Mictlantecuhtli and Quetzalcóatl

illuminated page from the Borgia Codex

from Puebla/Tlaxcala, Mexico

ca. 1400-1500mineral and vegetable pigments on deerskinapproximately 10 5/8 in. x 10 3/8 in.