Unit 5: Indigenous Americas, 1000 BCE–1980 CE

Contextualization of Indigenous Americas Art

• Chavin: Their art created intricate stone carvings and pottery, often depicting their gods and animals.
• Mayan: They were known for their elaborate architecture, intricate carvings, and colorful murals.
• Anasazi: They created beautiful pottery and rock art, often depicting their daily lives and spiritual beliefs.
• Mississippian: They produced intricate copper and shell ornaments, as well as impressive earthen mounds.
• Aztec: They were skilled in metalworking, creating intricate gold and silver jewelry, as well as colorful featherwork.
• Incan: They were known for their impressive stonework, including the famous Machu Picchu.
• Native North American: Their art varied greatly depending on the tribe, but often included intricate beadwork, basketry, and carvings.

Materials, Processes and Techniques in Indigenous American Art

Mesoamerica

• They used stone, clay, wood, feathers, shells, and precious metals such as gold and silver.
  • Stones were used to create sculptures, buildings, and other structures.
• Their processes include carving, casting, weaving, and painting.
  • Carving: Used create sculptures and other objects out of stone, while casting was used to create metal objects.
  • Weaving: Used to create textiles, which were often decorated with intricate designs.
  • Painting: Used to decorate buildings, sculptures, and other objects, and often used bright colors and bold designs.
• Techniques used in Mesoamerican art include relief sculpture, mosaic, and inlay.
  • Relief sculpture: Involves carving a design into a flat surface, while mosaic involves creating a design out of small pieces of stone or other materials.
  • Inlay: Involves setting small pieces of one material into another material to create a design.

Central Andes

• Pre-Columbian art used gold, silver, and copper to create intricate jewelry and ceremonial objects, and textiles were also important.
• During colonial times, European materials were introduced, leading to new painting techniques like the Cuzco School.
• Today, artists use a variety of materials and techniques, blending traditional and contemporary styles, experimenting with new materials, and exploring different art forms.

Native North America

• Natural materials like wood, stone, bone, and animal hides, as well as trade materials like glass beads, metals, and textiles are used.
• Art is created through carving, weaving, painting, and quilling.
• Basketry, pottery, and jewelry making are common techniques.
• These methods reflect cultural and spiritual beliefs and can tell stories, record history, or celebrate events.
• Traditional methods have adapted to modern materials and technologies.

Indigenous Americas Artworks

➼ Chavín de Huántar

• Details

  • 900–200 B.C.E.
  • Stone
  • Found in Northern Highlands, Peru

• Function

  • A religious capital.
  • Temple, 60 meters tall, was adorned with a jaguar sculpture, a symbol of power.
  • Hidden entrance to the temple led to stone corridors.

• Relief sculpture

  • Shows jaguars in shallow relief.
  • Located on the ruins of a stairway at Chavín.

  

➼ Lanzón Stone

• Details

  • 900–200 B.C.E.
  • Granite
  • Found in Peru

• Form

  • Inside the old temple of Chavín is a mazelike system of hallways.
  • Passageways have no natural light source; they are lit by candles and lamps.
  • At the center, underground, is the Lanzón (Spanish for “blade”) Stone; blade shaped; may also represent a primitive plough; hence, the role of the god in ensuring a successful crop.
  • Depicts a powerful figure that is part human (body) and part animal (claws, fangs); the god of the temple complex.
  • Head of snakes and a face of a jaguar.
  • Eyebrows terminate in snakes.
  • Flat relief; designs in a curvilinear pattern.
  • 15 feet tall.

• Function

  • Served as a cult figure.
  • Center of pilgrimage; however, few had access to the Lanzón Stone.
  • Modern scholars hypothesize that the stone acted as an oracle; hence a point of ­pilgrimage.
  • New studies show the importance of acoustics in the underground chamber.

  

➼ Nose Ornament

• Details

  • hammered gold alloy
  • Found in Cleveland Museum of Art

• Form

  • Worn by males and females under the nose.
  • Held in place by the semicircular section at the top.
  • Two snake heads on either end.

• Function: Transforms the wearer into a supernatural being during ­ceremonies.

• Context

  • Elite men and women wore the ornaments as emblems of their ties to the religion and eventually were buried with them.
  • The Chavín religion is related to the appearance of the first large-scale precious metal objects; revolutionary new metallurgical process.
  • Technical innovations express the “wholly other” nature of the religion.

  

➼ Yaxchilán

• Details
  • 725 CE
  • limestone
  • Found in Chiapas, Mexico
• Function
  • City set on a high terrace; plaza surrounded by important buildings.
  • Flourished c. 300–800 C.E.

➼ Structure 40

• Details

  • Overlooks the main plaza.
  • Three doors lead to a central room decorated with stucco.
  • Roof remains nearly intact, with a large roof comb (ornamented stone tops on roofs).
  • Corbel arch interior.

• Patronage: Built by ruler Bird Jaguar IV for his son, who dedicated it to him.

  

➼ Lintel 25, Structure 23

• Details

  • Overlooks the main plaza.
  • Three doors lead to a central room decorated with stucco.
  • Roof remains nearly intact, with a large roof comb (ornamented stone tops on roofs).
  • Corbel arch interior.

• Form and Content

  • The lintel was originally set above the central doorway of Structure 23 as a part of a series of three lintels.
  • Lady Xook (bottom right) invokes the Vision Serpent to commemorate her husband’s rise to the throne.
  • The Vision Serpent has two heads: one has a warrior emerging from its mouth, and the other has Tlaloc, a war god.
  • She holds a bowl with bloodletting ceremonial items: stinging spine and bloodstained paper; she runs a rope with thorns through her tongue.
  • She burns paper on a dish as a gift to the ­netherworld.
  • The depicted ritual was conducted to commemorate the accession of Shield Jaguar II to the throne.

• Function

  • Lintels intended to relay a message of the refoundation of the site—there was a long pause in the building’s history.
  • Shield Jaguar’s building program throughout the city may have been an attempt to ­reinforce his lineage and his right to rule.

• Context

  • The building is dedicated to Lady Xook, Shield Jaguar II’s wife.
  • The inscription is written as a mirror image—extremely unusual among Mayan glyphs; uncertain meaning, perhaps indicating she had a vision from the other side of existence and she was acting as an intercessor or shaman.
  • The inscription names the protagonist as Shield Jaguar II.
  • Bloodletting is central to the Mayan life. When a member of the royal family sheds his or her blood, a portal to the netherworld is opened and gods and spirits enter the world.

• Theory: Some scholars suggest that the serpent on this lintel and elsewhere depicts an ancestral spirit or founder of the kingdom.

  

➼ Structure 33

• Details

  • Overlooks the main plaza.
  • Three doors lead to a central room decorated with stucco.
  • Roof remains nearly intact, with a large roof comb (ornamented stone tops on roofs).
  • Corbel arch interior.

• Form

  • Restored temple structure.
  • Remains of roof comb with perforations.
  • Three central doorways lead to a large single room.
  • Corbel arch interior.

  

➼  Mesa Verde Cliff Dwellings

• Details

  • Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi)
  • 450–1300 C.E.
  • Sandstone
  • Found in Montezuma County, Colorado

• Form

  • The top ledge houses supplies in a storage area; cool and dry area out of the way; accessible only by ladder.
  • Each family received one room in the dwelling.
  • Plaza placed in front of the abode structure; kivas face the plaza.

• Function

  • The pueblo was built into the sides of a cliff, housed about one hundred people.
  • Clans moved together for mutual support and defense.

• Context

  • Farming done on the plateau above the pueblo; everything had to be imported into the structure; water seeped through the sandstone and collected in trenches near the rear of the structure.
  • Low winter sun penetrated the pueblo; high summer sun did not enter the interior and therefore it stayed relatively cool.
  • Inhabited for two hundred years; probably abandoned when the water source dried up.

  

➼  Great Serpent Mound

• Details

  • Mississippian (Eastern Woodlands)
  • c. 1070 C.E.
  • earthwork/effigy mound
  • Found in Adams County, ­southern Ohio

• Context

  • Many mounds were enlarged and changed over the years, not built in one campaign.
  • Effigy mounds popular in Mississippian culture.
  • Associated with snakes and crop fertility.
  • There are no burials associated with this mound, though there are burial sites nearby.

• Theories

  • Influenced by comets? Astrological phenomenon? Head pointed to summer solstice sunset?
  • Theory that it could be a representation of Halley’s Comet in 1066.
  • Rattlesnake as a symbol in Mississippian iconography; could this play a role in interpreting this mound?

  

➼  Templo Mayor (Main Temple)

• Details

  • 1375–1520
  • Stone
  • Found in Tenochtitlán, Mexico City, Mexico

• Form

  • Pyramids built one atop the other so that the final form encases all previous pyramids; seven building campaigns.
  • Pyramids have a step-like series of setbacks; not the smooth-surfaced pyramids seen in Egypt.
  • Characterized by four huge flights of very vertical steps leading to temples placed on top.

• Function

  • Tenochtitlán was laid out on a grid; city seen as the center of the world.
  • The temple structures on top of each pyramid were dedicated to and housed the images of the two important deities.

• Context

  • Two temples atop a pyramid, each with a separate staircase:
  • North: dedicated to Tlaloc, god of rain, agriculture.
  • South: dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, god of sun and war.
  • At the spring and autumn equinoxes, the sun rises between the two.
  • Large braziers put on top where the sacred fires burned.
  • Temple structures housed images of the deities.
  • Temples begun in 1375; rebuilt six times; destroyed by the Spanish in 1520.
  • The destruction of this temple and reuse of its stones by the Spanish asserted a political and spiritual dominance over the conquered civilization.

  

➼  Coyolxauhqui “She of the Golden Bells”

• Details

  • 1469
  • volcanic stone
  • Found in Museum of the Templo Mayor, Mexico City

• Form

  • Circular relief sculpture.
  • Once brilliantly painted.
  • So called because of the bells she wears as earrings.

• Context

  • Coyolxauhqui and her many brothers plotted the death of her mother, Coatlicue, who became pregnant after tucking a ball of feathers down her bosom.
  • When Coyolxauhqui chopped off Coatlicue’s head, a child, Huitzilopochtli, popped out of the severed body fully grown and dismembered Coyolxauhqui, who fell dead at the base of the shrine.
  • This stone represents the dismembered moon goddess, Coyolxauhqui, who is placed at the base of the twin pyramids of Tenochtitlán.
  • Aztecs sacrificed people and then threw their dismembered remains down the steps of the temple as Huitzilopochtli did to Coyolxauhqui.
  • Aztecs similarly dismembered enemies and threw them down the stairs of the great pyramid to land on the sculpture of Coyolxauhqui.
  • A relationship was established between the death and decapitation of Coyolxauhqui with the sacrifice of enemies at the top of Aztec pyramids.

  

➼  Calendar Stone

• Form: Made of basalt.

• Context

  • Aztecs felt they needed to feed the sun god human hearts and blood.
  • A tongue in the center of the stone coming from the god’s mouth is a representation of a sacrificial flint knife used to slash open the victims.
  • Circular shape reflects the cyclic nature of time.
  • Two calendar systems, separate but intertwined.
  • Calendars synced every fifty-two years in a time of danger, when the Aztecs felt a human sacrifice could ensure survival.

  

➼  Olmec-style Mask

• Form: Made of jadeite.

• Context

  • Found on the site; actually a much older work executed by the Olmecs.
  • Olmec works have a characteristic frown on the face; pugnacious visage; baby face; a cleft in the center of the head carved from greenstone.
  • Shows that the Aztecs collected and embraced artwork from other cultures, including early Mexican cultures such as the Olmec and Teotihuacán.
  • Shows that the Aztecs had a wide-ranging merchant network that traded historical items.

  

➼  Ruler’s Feather Headdress

• Details:

  • 1428–1520
  • feathers (quetzal and blue cotinga) and gold
  • Found in Museum of Ethnology, Vienna

• Form

  • Made from 400 long green feathers, the tails of the sacred quetzal birds; male birds produce only two such feathers each.
  • The number 400 symbolizes eternity.

• Function

  • Ceremonial headdress of a ruler.
  • Part of an elaborate costume.

• Context

  • Only known Aztec feather headdress in the world.
  • Feathers indicate trading across the Aztec Empire.
  • Headdress possibly part of a collection of artifacts given by Motechuzoma (Montezuma) to Cortez for Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire.
  • Current dispute over ownership of the headdress; today it is housed in the Museum of Ethnology in Vienna, Austria.

  

➼  Maize cobs

• Details

  • c. 1440–1533
  • sheet metal/repoussé, metal alloys
  • Found in Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

• Technique and Form

  • Repoussé technique.
  • Hollow metal object.
  • Life-size.

• Function

  • May have been part of a garden in which full-sized metal sculptures of maize plants and other items were put in place alongside actual plants in the Qorinkancha garden.
  • May have been used to ensure a successful harvest.

• Context

  • Maize was the principal food source in the Andes.
  • Maize was celebrated by having sculptures fashioned out of sheet metal.
  • Black maize was common in Peru; oxidized silver reflects that.

  

➼  Qorikancha

• Details

  • main temple, church, and convent of Santo Domingo
  • c. 1440, convent added 1550–1650
  • Andesite
  • Found in Cusco, Peru

• Form

  • Ashlar masonry; carefully grooved and beveled edges of the stone fit together in a puzzle-like formation.
  • Slight spacing among stones allows movement during ­earthquakes.
  • Walls taper upward; examples of Inkan trapezoidal architecture.
  • Temple displays Inkan use of interlocking stonework of great precision.
  • Original exterior walls of the temple were decorated in gold to symbolize sunshine.
  • Spanish chroniclers insist that the walls and floors of the temple were covered in gold.

• Function

  • Qorikancha: golden enclosure; once was the most important temple in the Inkan world.
  • Once was an observatory for priests to chart the skies.

• Context

  • The location is important; placed at the convergence of the four main highways and connected to the four districts of the empire; the temple cemented the symbolic importance of religion, uniting the divergent cultural practices that were observed in the vast territory controlled by the Inkas.
  • Remains of the Inkan Temple of the Sun form the base of the Santo Domingo convent built on top.

  

➼  Walls at Saqsa Waman (Sacsayhuaman)

• Details

  • c. 1440
  • Sandstone
  • Found in Peru

• Form

  • Ashlar masonry.
  • Ramparts contain stones weighing up to seventy tons, brought from a quarry two miles away.

• Context: Complex outside the city of Cusco, Peru, at the head of the puma-shaped plan of the city.

  

➼  Machu Picchu

• Details

  • 1450–1540
  • Granite
  • Found in Central Highlands, Peru

• Form

  • Buildings built of stone with perfectly carved rock rendered in precise shapes and grooved together; thatched roofs.
  • Outward faces of the stones were smoothed and grooved.
  • Two hundred buildings, mostly houses; some temples, palaces, and baths, and even an astronomical observatory; most in a basic trapezoidal shape.
  • Entryways and windows are trapezoidal.
  • People farmed on terraces.

• Function

  • Originally functioned as a royal retreat.
  • The estate of fifteenth-century Inkan rulers.
  • So remote that it was probably not used for administrative purposes in the Inkan world.
  • Peaceful center: many bones were uncovered, but none of them indicate war-like ­behavior.

  

➼  Observatory in Machu Picchu

• Details

  • 1450–1540
  • Granite
  • Found in Peru

• Form

  • Ashlar masonry.
  • Highest point at Machu Picchu.

• Function

  • Used to chart the sun’s movements; also known as the Temple of the Sun.
  • Left window: sun shines through on the morning of the winter solstice.
  • Right window: sun shines through on the morning of the summer solstice.
  • Devoted to the sun god.

  

➼  Intihuatana Stone in Machu Picchu

• Context

  • Intihuatana means “hitching post of the sun”; aligns with the sun at the spring and the autumn equinoxes, when the sun stands directly over the pillar and thus creates no shadow.
  • Inkan ceremonies held in concert with this event.

  

➼  All-T’oqapu Tunic

• Details

  • 1450–1540
  • camelid fiber and cotton
  • Found in Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.

• Form

  • Rectangular shape; a slit in the center is for the head; then the tunic is folded in half and the sides are sewn for the arms.
  • The composition is composed of small rectangular shapes called t’oqapu.
  • Individual t’oqapu may be symbolic of individuals, events, or places.
  • This tunic contains a large number of t’oqapu.

• Function

  • Wearing such an elaborate garment indicates the status of the individual.
  • May have been worn by an Inkan ruler.

• Technique

  • Woven on a backstrap loom.
  • One end of the loom is tied to a tree or a post and the other end around the back of the weaver.
  • The movement of the weaver can create alternating tensions in the fabric and achieve different results.

• Context

  • Exhibits Inkan preference for abstract designs, standardization of designs, and an expression of unity and order.
  • Finest textiles made by women, a highly distinguished art form; this tunic has a hundred threads per square centimeter.

  

➼  Bandolier Bag

• Details

  • From Lenape (Delaware tribe, Eastern Woodlands)
  • c. 1850
  • beadwork on leather
  • Found in Museum of the American Indian

• Form

  • The bandolier bag has a large, heavily beaded pouch with a slit on top.
  • The bag was held at hip level with strap across the chest.
  • The bag was constructed of trade cloth: cotton, wool, velvet, or leather.

• Function

  • It was made for men and women; objects of prestige.
  • They were made by women.
  • Functional and beautiful; acted also as a status symbol as part of an ­elaborate garb.
  • Bandolier bags are still made and worn today.

• Context

  • Beadwork not done in the Americas before European contact.
  • Beads and silk ribbons were imported from Europe.
  • The bags contain both Native American and European motifs.

  

➼  Transformation Mask

• Details

  • From Kwakwaha’wakw, Northwest Coast of Canada
  • late 19th century
  • wood, paint, and string
  • Found in Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Paris, France

• Form: The mask has a birdlike exterior face; when opened, it reveals a second human face on the interior.

• Function

  • The masks were worn by native people of the Pacific. Northwest, centered on Vancouver Island.
  • They were worn over the head as part of a complete body costume.

• Context

  • During a ritual performance, the wearer opens and closes the transformation mask using strings.
  • At the moment of transformation, the performer turns his back to the audience to conceal the action and heighten the ­mystery.
  • Opening the mask reveals the face of an ancestor; there is an ancestral element to the ceremony.
  • Although these masks could be used at a potlatch, most often they were used in winter initiation rites ceremonies.
  • The ceremony is accompanied by drumming and takes place in a “big house.”
  • Masks are highly prized and often inherited.

  

➼  Hide Painting of the Sun Dance

• Details

  • Attributed to Cotsiogo (Cadzi Cody)
  • Painted elk hide, Eastern Shoshone, Wind River Reservation, Wyoming,
  • c. 1890–1900,
  • Found in Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York

• Content

  • Depicts traditional aspects of the Plains people’s culture that were nostalgic rather than practical: bison hunted with bow and arrow—nomadic hunting gone; bison nearly extinct.
  • Hide paintings mark past events.
  • Bison considered to be gifts from the Creator.
  • Horses, in common use around 1750, liberated the Plains people.
  • Teepee: made of hide stretched over poles:
  • Exterior poles reach the spirit world or sky.
  • Fire represents the heart.
  • The doorway faces east to greet the new day.
  • The sun dance was conducted around a bison head, and was outlawed by the U.S. government; viewed as a threat to order.
  • The sun dance involved men dancing, singing, preparing for the feast, drumming, and constructing a lodge. They honored the Creator deity for the bounty of the land.
  • The warrior’s deeds were celebrated on the hide.

• Function

  • Worn as a robe over the shoulders of the warrior.
  • Perhaps a wall hanging.

• Context

  • Depicts biographical details; personal accomplishments; heroism; battles.
  • Men painted hides to narrate an event.
  • Eventually, painted hides were made for European and American markets; tourist trade.
  • Used paint and dyes obtained through trade.

  

➼  Black-on-black Ceramic Vessel

• Details

  • By Maria Martínez and Julian Martínez
  • From Tewa, Puebloan, San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico, mid-20th century
  • blackware ceramic
  • Found in Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C..

• Form

  • Black-on-black vessel.
  • Highly polished surface.
  • Contrasting shiny black and matte black finishes.
  • Exceptional symmetry; walls of even thickness; surfaces free of ­imperfections.

• Function

  • Comes from the thousand-year-old tradition of pottery making in the Southwest.
  • Maria Martínez preferred making pots using a new technique that rendered a vessel lightweight, less hard, and not watertight, as traditional pots were; this kind of vessel reflected the market shift away from utilitarian vessels to decorative objects.

• Technique

  • Used a mixture of clay and volcanic ash.
  • The surface was scraped to a smooth finish with a gourd tool and then ­polished with a stone.
  • Julian Martínez painted designs with a liquid clay that yielded a matte finish in contrast with the high shine of the pot itself.

• Context

  • At the time of production, pueblos were in decline; modern life was replacing traditional life.
  • Artists’ work sparked a revival of pueblo techniques.
  • Maria Martínez, the potter, developed and invented new shapes beyond the traditional pueblo forms.
  • Julian Martínez, the painter of the pots, revived the use of ancient mythic figures and designs on the pots.
  • Reflects an influence of Art Deco designs popular at the time.