PreColumbian Culture Spencer Leineweber

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Pre-Columbian CultureSpencer Leineweber

• October 16, 2007

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500-1000AD World Map
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Population Estimate

• Robert Royal writes that "estimates of
  pre-Columbian population figures have become
  heavily politicized with scholars who are
  particularly critical of Europe often favoring
  wildly higher figures.
• "pseudo-scientific number-crunching

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Population Debate

• Low estimates were sometimes reflective of
  European notions of their own cultural and racial
  superiority
• "Scholarly wisdom long held that Indians were so
  inferior in mind and works that they could not
  possibly have created or sustained large
  populations."

10,000BC
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Poverty Point 3500BC
confluence of six major rivers in Mississippi
River Valley
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Native American

• Depopulation
• Spanish conquistadors
• Epidemic diseases
• God
• Part of His divine plan in order to make way for
  a new Christian civilization specific western
  eyeglasses of culture

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Civilizations in America

• Millions of indigenous people before Columbus
• Pre-Columbian people
• pre-columbian derogatory term
• Low of 8.4 million to a high of 112.5 million
  persons vs 300 million today

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Thomas Jefferson

• Architect
• Statesman
• President
• Two major properties
• Monticello
• Poplar Forest
• Both were large farming estates

Poplar Forest
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Thomas Jefferson

• Thomas Jefferson, like other enlightened farmers,
  took a scientific approach to farming
• Crop rotation Plan
• Used Grid System in archaeology investigation
• Indian Mound structures discovered just about
  this time

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Rivanna River Valley

• Jefferson was a person to whom order, geometry
  and science were all one, and of all importance

Rivanna River Bottom on his Property Was Site of
Indian Mounds
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Poplar Forest

• 1806 Original Construction
• Typical plan for time period
• The ground was very carefully compacted in
  distinct layers of ordered size rocks similar to
  the construction of the Indian mounds shaped in
  Octagons and circles

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Poplar Forest

• Two hills at end of hyphens
• 12 high, 100 in diameter
• located one hundred feet from the house
• On top of each mound were planted four weeping
  willow trees in a square twenty feet apart to
  reflect the size of the individual squares within
  the octagon of the main structure.

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Hopewell Mounds

• The square or octagon attached by hyphens is the
  geometry of the earthworks found during
  Jefferson's time in Circleville, Seal, Newark,
  and Hopeton.

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Ephraim Squier

• Squier, a New Yorker, was a self-educated
  journalist who arrived in Ohio in 1845 to serve
  as editor of the Scioto Gazette
• Became Amateur archaeologist

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Hopewell Mound, Newark Ohio
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Mound Culture

• 900AD Regional center for Mississippi
• 120 earthen mounds 97 documented
• Largest pre-historic constructions in North
  America

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Mound City and Scioto Valley
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WWI Sherman Barracks
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COMMOSITY CORN

• Achievement in agricultural history
• Corn domesticated in Mexico about 800AD
• Husked, planted, cultivated
• Hybrid corn developed 1000 AD for shorter growing
  season
• Elite class controlling workers in lower classes
• Land clearing, harvesting, maintenance

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Serpent Mound, Adena Ohio 9501200 A.D.
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Serpent Mound, Adena Ohio 9501200 A.D AD

• Alignment
• Summer solstice sunset
• Winter sunrise
• Burned stones at head

Squier and Davis Drawing
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Serpent Mound Excavations
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Astrological Events

• Crab Nebula
• (1054 A.D.)
• Halley's Comet
• (1066 A.D.)

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Serpent Mound Stars Patterns
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Serpent Mound

• Uranium Deposits
• Radioactive energies present

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Cahokia Location

• Rich food plain
• American Bottom
• Fertile soil
• Extensive forests
• Plentiful fish

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Cahokian Culture

• Large Communal Plazas.
• Monumental 'Public' Architecture.
• Palisaded Villages.
• Flat Topped Temple Mounds, sometimes paired with
  round top burial mounds.
• A particular set of religious symbols, found on
  pottery, copper and stone.
• The occasional practice of human sacrifice.
• Specific syles and decorations on (usually shell
  tempered) pottery.
• The practice of playing the chunkey game with a
  stone disc rolled down a prepared court

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Cahokia

• Average age of Mississippian
• Men at death
• about 37 years
• Women at death
• about 32 years

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Material Culture of Mississippi Valley

• COMMODITY
• Elaborate mortuary rituals
• Mass production Organized labor making artifacts

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Cahokia Material Culture

• Falcon Symbol
• military cult
• upper world
• Shared system of religious beliefs
• No tribe there when Spanish arrived 1539
• Sub tribe of Illini- 1600 200 years after last
  of Cahokia community

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Cahokia Pottery

• Coil Assembled
• Functions of everyday existence
• Different shapes
• What ate
• Community aspect of food
• Large cooking vessels
• Vegetative decoration

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Cahokia Pottery

• Coil Assembled
• Functions of everyday existence
• Different shapes
• What ate
• Community aspect of food
• Large cooking vessels
• Vegetative decoration

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Cahokia Grave Figure

• COMMODITY
• Represents after life
• Sun worship

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Cahokia Mica Carved Hand Artifacts

• Large mounds Indicates cooperation between
  humans Large numbers of people settled in
  villages
• Shift labor from hunt and harvest to civic and
  ceremony

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Cahokia

• A hierarchical or ranked society and complex
  social and political system

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Cahokia Mounds

• Three types
• pyramid-shaped platform mounds for ceremonial
  buildings or residences of the elite,
• conical mounds
• ridge-top mounds
• both of which were used for burials of VIPs and,
  in some cases, victims of sacrificial rituals.

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Monks Mound

• Ruler died - "palace" destroyed
• New layer of earth was added
• 1000 man years
• Layers added at each generation
• 3x size any other mound in North America

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Monks Mound, Cahokia
1892
2000
1936
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Monks Mound

• Generation Layers 32 deep
• Limestone Layer
• Baskets dumped
• Size of Pyramid at Cheops
• Platform Mound 1080x 710x100
• Flat Top
• Stockade

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Cahokia
Monks Mound
Roads linking outlying areas
Endless sea of farms
Clusters of houses
Artificial reservoirs
Only downtown walled (peace)
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Houses within village

• Wooden Post Holes
• Wattle and Daub Walls
• Fires ignites the walls to kiln dry daub

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Cahokia Astrology

• Predetermined axis was typically established in
  congruence with the cardinal directions and
  astrological alignments

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Woodhenge

• Timber circles are circular arrangements of
  wooden posts
• Alignments of Posts correspond to the summer and
  winter soltice

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Woodhenge

• 48 Posts 20 Cedar x 20
• Knowledge of seasons important to growing season
• Alignment of posts predict growing season fire
  stains, sun return
• Sunrise over certain posts could have been used
  to signal propitious times for seasonal
  activities such as planting around the time of
  the spring equinox and harvest after the autumnal
  equinox

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Cahokia Commodity Demise

• 1250 Global Cooling
• Bone analysis of bodies shows Urban Stress
• Defensive stockade needed 20,000 logs
• Demand to replenish would be staggering
• Causing floods, erosion, silt clogging streams

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Thomas Jefferson

• "I slumber without fear, and review in my dreams
  the visions of antiquity."
• The circles and octagons at Poplar Forest and at
  the Ohio mounds are incantations to wholeness, to
  quietude, to completion.

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Jefferson Memorial