Mississippian Period

At this time, maize becomes the primary crop in the midwest of America.
Mississippian Societies are different than their predecssors
1. Bow and Arrow Introducted
2. Rapid Population Growth
3. Large Communities form and Public Architecture and Hereditary Leadership
4. Two Central Ideologies live here
  1. Warfare
  2. Fertility
Cahokia, IL
1. Movie
  1. Some of the largest architectural works in the ancient world
  2. The Mounds
    1. not randomly placed
    2. markers of significant locations?
    3. built in stages
    4. Cahokia's leaders lived on top of this
    5. platform mound
    6. ridgetop mound
    7. 4 terraces
    8. stockades surrounded the main city
    9. 10 stories tall
    10. Topic
      It took an enormous amount of labor accumulated to build cahokia. The stockaid itself required thousands of trees.
  3. "Great Civilization" "Advanced" meaning european-esque
  4. No Indian Civilization developed the wheel
  5. Virtually all idols were based on fertility
  6. Wheres most eastern symbols are of warfare
  7. Symbolic dances and fertility rituals
2. Lecture
  1. Center of a global trade surface
  2. mississippi river trades everything
  3. mounds
  4. Monks Mound
    1. 100 feet high
    2. 1000 x 800 sq feet
    3. volume of 7 oil tankers
  5. Mound 72 Sacrifices
  6. State Societies and Extreme Social Inequality
  7. What happened to Cahokia? It got overtaken by centers in the southwest
Moundville, AL
1. Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
  1. aka "Southern Cult"
    1. Widespread network of shared symbols
    2. beliefs
    3. interaction
    4. trade
  2. symbols appearing on trade items of pottery, copper, and shell
  3. themes
    1. ancestors
    2. fertility
    3. warfare
  4. motifs
    1. sunburst
    2. skull and bones
    3. trophy heads
    4. eye-in-hand
  5. "a lot of archeologists get involved in analyzing art"
  6. A.D. 1200-1500s
  7. Mounds
    1. platform mounds
    2. elite burial mounds
      1. copper, elite axes found in moundville
2. Fertility/Warfare
Southwest Cultural Sequence
1. Environment
  1. dry
  2. intermittent river flows
  3. agriculture was difficult as a consequence
2. Productivity
  1. never equalled the woodlanders
3. Peoples
  1. Hookam
    1. Sonoran Desert
    2. Northern Mexico
    3. Phoenix Basin area
    4. waddle and daube architecture
      1. reeds
      2. stakes
      3. daubs with clay
    5. Corn
      1. grindstone and grinder
        manos
        metates
    6. red on buff pottery
      1. red designs and a bufff background
  2. Anasazi
  3. Mogollon