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...A Forum for American Indian Issues...
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Archaeology 
Sun Jan 22, 2012 at 10:39:47 AM PST
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Humans-Homo sapiens-have lived in South America for at least 15,000 years and possibly longer. The earliest period of human occupation is generally called the Lithic Stage by archaeologists. During this time period the first post-glacial hunting and gathering groups lived in South America. The people were living in small groups which subsisted on hunting, fishing, and the gathering of wild plants.
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Thu Jan 05, 2012 at 15:59:15 PM PST
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When the Dutch and the French, and later the English, began to enter into what would become New York State searching for trading partners in the seventeenth century, they encountered a large, well-organized alliance of tribes known as the Iroquois. The League of Five Nations, also known as the Iroquois Confederacy, was composed of five culturally and linguistically similar nations who had come together to promote peace among themselves.
The map above shows the approximate location of the Iroquoian and Algonquian tribes when the Europeans first began to enter the area.
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Tue Jan 03, 2012 at 16:05:56 PM PST
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Some time before 900 CE, people begin migrating into what will become present-day Georgia from the area around the Mississippi River near present-day St. Louis. Culturally, archaeologists consider these immigrants to be Mississippian people and they know that this is a migration because the material culture they bring with them (and the material culture they leave behind for archaeologists to study) is completely different from that of earlier peoples. This material culture included a different style of pottery, different burial practices, and, most evident, a totally different architecture.
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Sun Nov 27, 2011 at 11:07:29 AM PST
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Mississippian is a cultural complex whose hearth appears to be in the American Bottom area near the Mississippi River in Illinois. It is characterized by: tempered clay pottery, square houses, and pyramidal mounds. By a thousand years ago, this complex was moving into Alabama.
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Sat Nov 26, 2011 at 08:36:41 AM PST
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Shortly after the Norse colonization of Greenland under Erik the Red in 986, there were reports by the Viking sea kings of three new lands to the west of Greenland: Helluland (Baffin Island and the northern part of Labrador); Markland (central and southern Labrador); and Vinland (Newfoundland and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Over the past fifty years or so, archaeology has revealed over 300 years of sporadic contact between the Greenlandic Norse and various Indian, Inuit, and other Native American peoples, concentrated primarily in the Canadian Arctic.
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Fri Nov 25, 2011 at 15:29:02 PM PST
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For thousands of years Indian people left evidence of their presence on the land with rock art: pictographs and petroglyphs. Pictographs are created by painting on rock surfaces with natural pigments while petroglyphs are pecked, carved, or abraded into the surface of the rock.
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Sun Nov 20, 2011 at 12:17:48 PM PST
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There were a number of ancient American Indian cultures which constructed large earthen mounds in what is now the eastern portion of the United States. Archaeologists have often labeled these as Adena (which originated in the middle Ohio River valley about 500 BCE), Hopewell (which originated in the central Scioto region of Ohio about 200 BCE), and Mississippian (which had developed by 1000 CE along the Mississippi River). None of these three mound building traditions was restricted to a single site, but seemed to influence diverse Indian cultures in a fairly wide geographic region. It was out of the Hopewell tradition that the McKeithen site in Florida seemed to emerge nearly 2000 years ago.
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Thu Oct 20, 2011 at 20:58:26 PM PDT
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About 650 CE some trends were beginning to emerge in the American Bottom area near the Mississippi River in Illinois which would culminate in the development of a complex culture known today as Mississippian. Setting the stage for the emergence of this complex culture were the use of the bow and arrow and the development of maize agriculture. The largest of the Mississippian settlements was Cahokia, located in southwestern Illinois. From here, Mississippian culture seemed to spread out for a considerable distance.
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Sun Oct 16, 2011 at 21:34:13 PM PDT
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Cobá was a Maya city located in the northern portion of the Maya region on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Most of the city was constructed between 500 and 900-a period corresponding to the Classic Maya Period. Most of the dated inscriptions found in the city date from the seventh century.
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Wed Oct 05, 2011 at 15:19:48 PM PDT
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Mississippian is a cultural complex whose hearth appears to be in the American Bottom area near the Mississippi River in Illinois. The most spectacular characteristic of Mississippian material culture was the construction of earthen pyramids. The pyramids, usually called mounds, have a flat top which provided a space for a ceremonial building or a chiefly residence. Setting the stage for the emergence of this complex culture were the use of the bow and arrow and the development of maize agriculture at about 650 CE. With the development of Mississippian culture, communities became larger and more complex. Mississippian culture spread out into the American southeast and about 1050 Mississippian people established a village at Shiloh, Tennessee. The site was enclosed by a palisade and had a population of 300-400.
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Mon Sep 12, 2011 at 17:46:45 PM PDT
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Tulum, located on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, was one of the last cities built and inhabited by the Maya. The earliest date found on a stele at Tulum is 564 CE and the city flourished from about 1200 to 1521. It was a major link in the rather extensive trade route of the Maya. Its seaside location made it a transportation hub: both maritime and land trade routes converged here. Its fortifications show that it was an important site, one which had to be defended from raiders and enemies.
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Tue Sep 06, 2011 at 22:25:21 PM PDT
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For most people, the Maya and the Aztec are the best-known Mesoamerican cultures. The area occupied by the Maya included southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and El Salvador. The ancient Maya city of Palenque was "discovered" by Europeans in the 1700s. For the next several centuries, European explorers would marvel at the city's architecture, loot its art, and destroy many of its buildings. Many people were convinced that the city was too complex, too well-built to have been constructed by American Indians, so they assumed that it must have been built by Romans, Egyptians, Greeks, the Lost Tribes of Israel, Europeans, or others. In the twentieth century, some pseudo-scholars, whose works are still promoted by certain television networks, claimed that the builders must have been ancient aliens from distant planets who brought a now-forgotten technology to the Maya.
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Sun Aug 28, 2011 at 11:28:28 AM PDT
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While the Inka are the best-known pre-Columbian civilization in South America, there were other earlier and longer-lasting highly developed civilizations. Tiwanaku (also spelled Tiahuanaco and Tiahuanacu) is generally recognized by archaeologists as an important precursor of the Inka Empire. Tiwanaku, located on the southeastern shore of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, was a major city-state that controlled parts of the Andean highlands for about five centuries.
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Fri Aug 19, 2011 at 20:31:13 PM PDT
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What is now the state of Nevada was home to American Indian people for several millennia prior to the arrival of the first Europeans in the area. As a part of the Great Basin, Nevada is often seen as being somewhat inhospitable to human habitation. The Great Basin Area includes the high desert regions between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains. It is bounded on the north by the Columbia Plateau and on the south by the Colorado Plateau. It includes southern Oregon and Idaho, a small portion of southwestern Montana, western Wyoming, eastern California, all of Nevada and Utah, a portion of northern Arizona, and most of western Colorado. This is an area which is characterized by low rainfall and extremes of temperature. The valleys in the area are 3,000 to 6,000 feet in altitude and are separated by mountain ranges running north and south that are 8,000 to 12,000 feet in elevation. The rivers in this region do not flow into the ocean, but simply disappear into the sand. The summers are hot and the winters are cold. Yet in spite of the ecological challenges, Indian people successfully adapted to the region.
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Thu Jun 30, 2011 at 09:28:25 AM PDT
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Three thousand years ago-about 1000 BCE-there was a lot going on around the world. Some examples:
Egypt: the New Kingdom era was collapsing
Mesopotamia: Babylon was in decline
Greece: Greece was beginning a period which would later be known as the Dark Ages characterized by the loss of Mycenaean writing
Rome: there was no city of Rome:only seven hills with a few hamlets
South Asia: the Aryans were settling on the plain of the Ganges River
Pacific Ocean Islands: the Lapita people were sailing to New Caledonia, Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga
China: the Zhou dynasty was in its first century of rule
Middle East: the Hebrew tribes were uniting under the leadership of Saul
Europe: the Celtic migrations were beginning
Mesoamerica: the Mayans were draining swamps to create new farmlands
North America: American Indians by this time had developed many diverse cultures. What follows is a brief overview, based on archaeological findings, of some of the things that were happening in North America around 1000 BCE.
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Mon Jun 06, 2011 at 21:52:06 PM PDT
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Four thousand years ago, the Bronze Age was just beginning in Europe and in China. Palace civilizations were beginning in the Aegean. The chariot had emerged as a war vehicle in the Near East, in Egypt, and in parts of Eastern Europe. By 4,000 years ago, American Indians had occupied North America many millennia and had developed adaptations to the many ecological zones within the region.
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Thu May 26, 2011 at 13:47:52 PM PDT
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In 1854 a Mormon expedition under the leadership of W. D. Huntington reported finding some ancient ruins in southeast Utah. Twenty years later, the photographer William Henry Jackson gave the name Hovenweep-a Paiute/Ute word meaning "Deserted Valley"-to the ruins.
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Wed May 04, 2011 at 17:55:20 PM PDT
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While the Inka (Inca) are probably the best-known of the ancient civilizations of South America because they were flourishing when the Spanish arrived, there were many ancient civilizations which preceded them and provided the cultural foundations for the Inka. One of these was Moche who began to flourish about 2000 years ago.
The Moche flourished from about 1 to 700 CE on the north Peruvian desert margin between the Andes and the Pacific. Their realm extended for at least 250 miles between the Lambayeque and Nepeña Valleys. In each of the river valleys they established ceremonial centers with large platform mounds. Each of the major Moche settlements seems to have been ruled by hereditary rulers who held religious and political power. Unlike the later Inka, the Moche were not an empire, but more closely resembled city-states unified by common cultural features.
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Wed Apr 27, 2011 at 22:12:44 PM PDT
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The Mesoamerican ball game was played throughout Mesoameria-Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras. In addition, a version of the game was played by the Hohokam in Arizona and there is evidence of the games (stone yokes) found in the Caribbean islands. For the Maya, the ball game was culturally and ritually important. Most major Maya centers have a ball court.
The ball court at Chichén Itzá is shown above.
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Tue Apr 19, 2011 at 13:05:58 PM PDT
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A thousand years before the Spanish invasion of the Americas began, American Indians were living throughout North America. Furthermore, they had lived on this continent for many thousands of years before this.
There was no single, unified American Indian culture: people adapted to the many different environments of North America in many different ways. One of the technological innovations that began to spread into many parts of North America at this time was the bow and arrow, which was often used alongside the atlatl. Here are some of the events and developments happening circa 500 CE. The names of the archaeological sites mentioned are not the names which Indian people 1,500 year ago used: they are contemporary names given to them by archaeologists and others.
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| In Memoriam |
In honor of my mother, THE FLORA SOMBRERO LIND NAVAJO ENDOWMENT FUND has been set up to accept your donations.
This scholarship endowment has been established at the American Indian College Fund to honor Flora Sombrero Lind, as an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation who was born at Inscription House, Arizona of the Many Goats clan circa 1925. This scholarship endowment is funded by Flora's family and friends who want to see Navajo students pursue higher education and carry on their great Navajo heritage.
Please leave a comment here if you donate.
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