AMST 211 1st Edition Lecture 10Outline of Current Lecture 1. History of the Indian culture prior to the settling of Europeans. 2. Top Four Things: 3. Mississippian Cultures:4. Mississippian art (aesthetics) 5. Mississippian IconographyCurrent LectureArchaeology in the American South: Four Things to KnowGuest Speaker: Vin SteponaitisThe US is the one place where people have no awareness of its own ancient history. History of the Indian culture prior to the settling of Europeans. Archaeology: The point is people. The goal is to reconstruct how people lived in the past. It is notthe reliance on written words, it is material record and culture. It is the stuff that people left behind. You occasionally strike gold, but often times archaeologists look for trash (tools, meal remains, crops). Writing was invented less than ten thousand years ago: meaning you don’t have history from those periods way back. Top Four Things: 1. First Peopling (14,000 B.C.)People arrived sometime during the last ice age. It is believed they were asian people that were able to cross over into Alaska and settle into North, Central, and South America. As ice sheets expand, sea levels drop, and the Beringia strait loses all water and becomes a land bridge. People were living in North America at least 12,000 years ago. Hunters and gatherers required movement towards food. Clovis Point (11,000 B.C.): spear point from Durham County.These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.6,000 years ago lots happens in the Lower Mississippi Valley: contains some of the oldest monuments in the world. Watson Brake: 3400 BC 11 Mounds that form a circle. The grandfather of these sites was built before 1,000 BC is called Poverty Point in Louisianna. The ridges were artificial due to the symmetry. People probably lived on the ridges. Eastern Agricultural Complex: Farming was independently invented in the Mid-South. People would borrow crops from neighbors. Starting about 4,000 years ago. Corn isn’t even around here. • Plant Species◦ Goosefoot, Marsh Elder, Squash, Sunflower, Maygrass, Knotweed, and Little BarleyMississippian Cultures:Corn really allowed you to support large concentrations of people. You now start to see farming villages. Etowah (Georgia): Mississippian people built central locations with large monuments. Flat top mounds supported buildings for religion and politics. Cahokia (Illinois): first big civic ceremonial center. Right across from St. Louis. Over 100 mounds. At its height, there was a population of 40,000 people. These mounds were fossilized labor. They didn’t have machinery to help build the population. Mississippian art (aesthetics) Many regional styles, mixed assemblages, and meanings of imagery are becoming known. Supernatural beings that lives on in stories that have been passed down. Mississippian IconographyCosmograms: short hand drawings of the universe. Saw it as a universe with layers. Each layers were inhabited by various supernatural beings. All three layers are connected by a central axis. A single symbol that brings a set of stories to represent a common idea. Freeze frames: from stories that people knew. Example: catholic churches that depict scenes of the crucifixion.Effigies: pipes made of stone. Most are found in the deep South. The general style is “Bellaire” pipes.Emerald Mound and Moundville: pipes carved out of limestone of supernatural beings. The key is in fossils.“Theme” versus “Style” Theme: What is depicted?Style: How is it depicted?Thematic Groups: panthers, quadruped, frog, raptor, panther-raptor-snake, raptor-fish-snake, crouching human, pot bearer. In the pipes, incredible attention is given to the hairstyle. These mark individual supernaturals. Also, critters are representation of rituals that connected with supernatural powers below.What do the crouching human figures mean? reenactment of smoking rituals.Bottom line: These pipes were religious