4.0: Chapter Introduction
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Editors' Note: Locating This Chapter and Ourselves
A chapter focusing on Art of the Ancient Americas is not traditionally included in a typical textbook for a “Survey of Western Art History” course (or for C-ID Art History 110). However, as editors of this text, we thought it imperative to include this chapter for a number of reasons.
This book is meant for everyone, but written in particular with California Community College (CCC) students in mind. Seventy-three percent of CCCs are Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and more than 44% of the CCC student population identifies as Hispanic. Although 1.6% of California’s population identify as Native American or Alaskan Native, only 0.5% of the CCC population does. These demographics point to two important motivations to include this chapter.
First, we want to serve CCC students with this textbook. This chapter focuses on the ancient art of the Americas, meaning it looks at a sampling of ancient Indigenous cultures and art objects through 1300—first from the United States, next from Mesoamerica, and finally from South America. This content is particularly relatable and compelling to many students, especially those who may have family ties to Mexico or South America, or are Indigenous to the United States. Many CCC students want to learn about both the art of their ancestors and their place in history. In addition, California architecture, art, and visual history is also heavily influenced by Indigenous, Mexican, and South American cultures, making all California residents visually invested in understanding our personal place and stake in history.
Second, in conjunction with our Land Acknowledgement below, we would like this chapter to serve as both a call to action and as a stepping stone for centering more curriculum on our own Indigenous histories of the United States and greater North and South America. We see this chapter as a mirror of sorts, holding it up to ourselves before looking to a larger, more global past to trace and tell the history of art. As such, we would like to acknowledge and honor the art, culture, and people on whose land we and our CCC system are now on.
Northwestern University’s Land Acknowledgement reminds its students that “[i]t is important to understand the longstanding history that has brought you to reside on the land, and to seek to understand your place within that history. Land acknowledgments do not exist in a past tense, or historical context: colonialism is a current ongoing process, and we need to build our mindfulness of our present participation.” With this chapter, we hope to build on this reminder and to contextualize the place and home of our readers.
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge the California Community Colleges' presence on land throughout the unceded territory of California, the traditional and ancestral home to nearly 200 tribal communities and nations. As Northwestern University’s land acknowledgment reminded us above, it is important to understand and discuss the lasting and current legacies of colonialism and settler violence, while it is also Indigenous protocol to acknowledge the land and express gratitude to its stewards.
We also understand that acknowledgement is not enough and we hope that information in this book and in our courses helps to illuminate a more truthful account of history. We honor the Indigenous cultures of the United States and Americas by opening the book with their art and enduring artistic legacies that deeply influence our art and culture today.
To learn more, we suggest:
- Following the work of Dr. Adrienne Keene (Cherokee Nation) and artist Matika Wilbur (Tulalip and Swinomish) in their podcast All My Relations, on Keene’s blog Native Appropriations, and in her Notes and Sources page for her book Notable Native People
- Exploring growing digital projects and archives such as Mapping Indigenous LA: Place-Making Through Digital Storytelling and Indigenous Peoples of California: Related Resources at The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley
- Learning about the Landback movement and campaign to dismantle and defund white supremacy and to return public lands to Indigenous communities
- Visiting the Native Land Digital Map and/or texting 907-312-5085 with your city and state in the message. You will learn whose land you are on so that you are empowered to learn more about where you reside, about who the traditional keepers of your hometowns have been, and about how you can take action and honor that relationship.
Courtesy of Desert X:
“For Nicholas Galanin, a Tlingit and Unangax̂ artist and musician, memory and land are inevitably entwined. The 45-foot letters of Never Forget reference the Hollywood sign, which initially spelled out HOLLYWOODLAND and was erected to promote a whites-only development. Its timing coincided with a development in Palm Springs that also connected to the film industry: Studio contracts limited actors’ travel, contributing to the city’s rise as playground and refuge of the stars. Meanwhile, the white settler mythology of America as the land of the free, home of the brave was promoted in the West, and the landscape was cinematized through the same lens. Never Forget asks settler landowners to participate in the work by transferring land titles and management to local Indigenous communities. The work is a call to action and a reminder that land acknowledgments become only performative when they do not explicitly support the land back movement. Not only does the work transmit a shockwave of historical correction, but also promises to do so globally through social media. Donate to the LANDBACK GoFundMe.”
In her chapter entitled “Settler Colonialism 101,” scholar Adrienne Keene argues that “[t]he only way to end colonization is to go through a process of decolonization. Decolonization isn’t about making things better for Indigenous people under the current structure; it’s about returning land to Indigenous stewardship and revitalizing the knowledge associated with that land. Decolonization entails two words: Land Back. We don’t have to know what this would look like to start working toward decolonization, but the first step is recognizing that we still live in a settler colony society.”
To learn more about the Landback movement, please explore the links in this section and in the resource section following the Land Acknowledgement.Introduction: Ghost Tracks and Kelp Highways: New Origin Stories in the U.S.
The prints are immediately recognizable: human feet, with toes dug deep into what was then squishy mud, long since hardened into stone. These are what archaeologists call “ghost tracks,” because of the way brief stretches of them appear without traces on either side—and a recent set of them is causing scientists to rethink long-held beliefs about just when the first people arrived in what is today the United States.
Human presence in the Americas is much more recent than in Africa, where our earliest ancestors originated, and Eurasia, into which they spread. The oldest art, as is discussed in the next chapter, is on those continents, not on the Americas. However, what the Americas do show is evidence not only of human ingenuity and persistence—but also of how new discoveries and scientific techniques can upend what we thought we knew about our earliest ancestors. Two recent archaeological finds have scientists questioning long-held beliefs regarding not only who the first people were to come to the present-day United States, but also how long ago they came here and how they arrived here—whether by land or by water.
First, in January of 2020, a group of scientists reported that they had successfully dated more than 60 so-called “ghost tracks” or human footprints left in an alkali flat in White Sands National Park, New Mexico. The results were shocking: radiocarbon dating of plant matter within and alongside the prints placed the tracks at somewhere between 21,000 to 23,000 years old. This is the earliest date yet estimated for the human occupation of North America, far predating other sites like Monte Verde, Chile from 14,500 years ago (still contested by some scientists), or Clovis, New Mexico, where Edgar B. Howard found an ancient spear tip from approximately 13,000 years ago.
The "BCE" in the caption for Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\) stands for "Before the Common Era," which is the dating convention that scientists and academics use today. We are living in the 21st century CE, or the Common Era. Usually CE is only used after a date within the first century or two of the Common Era; for dates more recent than that, it is simply assumed (unlike BCE dates, which must always be indicated). Occasionally you will still encounter sources that use the older convention BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini). They are referring to the same thing as BCE and CE, but the newer conventions are religiously neutral.
The new date suggested by the White Sands ghost tracks puts humans in North America during the height of the last Ice Age and well before the ice sheets would have retreated—something previously unfathomable. A mammoth track found alongside human prints in one of the topmost layers of the geological record further indicates that the site cannot be more recent than the late Pleistocene when mammoths became extinct. Radiocarbon dating is a technology that continues to become more precise, but is still subject to recalibrations and ongoing discoveries, and additional research is needed to verify this dramatically different proposed new date of human occupation in the Americas.
Second, another exciting archaeological theory has been taking shape off the coast of California, examining not just when humans made it to this continent, but how. The shores, coves, and cliffs of the Channel Islands are growing sites of interest, particularly for underwater archaeologists who are looking into Ice Age settlements. (Learn more about the growing field of nautical archaeology in Chapter 8, too.)
filippo_jean, CC BY-SA 2.0)
The most well-established theory of human occupation of North America is known as the “Clovis first” paradigm, named after the location where Howard found the first of what would be many “Clovis points,” stone spear heads designed for hunting big game. According to this theory, after these first Americans crossed a land bridge from Asia to Alaska, they spread inland through the continent, hunting mammoths and other large animals. However, there is increasing evidence that the first Americans were not the Clovis big-game hunters of popular lore, but may have been seagoing wayfarers who had traveled along America’s west coast by watercraft, following what Jon Erlandson calls the “kelp highway.” The Monte Verde site, excavated in 1997, was estimated to be nearly 3,000 years older than any previously dated Clovis site, and surprisingly did not contain any Clovis points or signs that these were big-game hunters—but did contain nine different kinds of seaweed, indicating to many scientists that these settlers likely traveled from Siberia, Alaska, or the Yukon down the North and South American coastline. It is quite possible that they stopped at the Channel Islands on the way.
In fact, the origin myths and oral history of the Chumash people, who inhabited the Channel Islands for thousands of years and today live along the mainland coast, lend additional support to this theory. Maria Solares, a cultural matriarch and Chumash elder, described to a Smithsonian anthropologist in the early 20th century that “the Chumash people bloomed from a seed in the soil of the Channel Islands, planted by the Earth goddess herself. After allowing them to flourish there for thousands of years, she told some to leave, to go fill the mainland, which was then empty of people.” Brian Holguin, a geochemical archaeologist who is also a member of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians and great-great-great-great-grandson of Maria Solares, and others working in the Channel Islands, have argued that before the ice melted, allowing the Clovis people to migrate south, the descendents of the very first Americans might have been living along the coastal enclaves of the Channel Islands, then a single mass called Santarosae. This history could remain buried in the seabeds below, awaiting a rediscovery.
Our earliest ancestors were travelers, survivors, and creators. Sometimes they left behind tiny, intricate, portable items, and sometimes large, sophisticated urban developments. While it is often simply luck that determines which objects have survived to allow us to piece together their stories—whether they happened to be made out of a material that lasts, whether the climate has been conducive to preservation, or even where excavation has been possible—the vagaries of discovery also include who excavates, and under what premises. (See the suggested article by Sarah E. Baires for the problematic history behind some of the early archaeological explanations for the mound builders in Ohio and Illinois, for instance.) Nevertheless, as archaeologists explore new sites, and use increasingly sensitive dating technology, our understanding of human history expands and deepens. What we see here in the Americas, where we start this exploration, can inform our understanding of other art around the world—and of the changing stories that scientific inquiry helps us to tell about our ancient human past.
Maria Solares’ interview about Chumash origin myth and oral history reminds us of the importance of oral history and the impact it can have in (re)informing contemporary archaeology and research. Today, archaeologists and art historians are listening more carefully to oral histories internationally in order to help validate the recollection of elders and further scientific research.
“Sometimes,” Dr. Billie Lythberg writes, discussing the megalithic capital Nan Madol, “oral histories are able to explain the extraordinary feats of men in ways that present-day science cannot replicate.” Nan Madol, near the island of Pohnpei in the Pacific, features massive and heavy basalt structures, built between 1200-1600 on artificial islands first constructed in 900. Exactly how the site was engineered remains unclear, but Lythberg explains that “aspects of the oral history of Nan Madol, passed down through many generations, correlate with archaeological evidence. For example, oral histories describe a series of canals cut to allow eels to enter the city from the sea.” These canals appear to be key to understanding how the basalt and coral megaliths were moved into place. And in Rapa Nui, the Rapanui term neke neke refers to “walking without legs” and has influenced local archaeologists' newly-tested theories about how their megalithic moai were moved into place.
In Keone Nunes’ 1998 introduction to Unwritten Literature of Hawaiʻi: The Sacred Songs of the Hula, he argues that people “who rely solely upon the written word sometimes mistakenly believe that oral cultures have a faulty ability to pass on information, that each person responsible for the information changes the facts in retelling. In ancient Hawaiʻi, as in other Polynesian societies, the telling of traditions was critical to continuity with the past and to survival of the future. Therefore, Hawaiians realized that listening was equally important as speaking if the traditions were to accurately survive.” Although there is a tendency in cultures that rely on written histories to underestimate the accuracy of oral histories, it is important to remember that oral traditions can be just as accurate as written history—and even more so—and have a valuable place in both understanding history, and in furthering historical research and archaeological discovery, as indicated by just the few cases above.
Historiography (Writing History)
Terminology
The American Southwest and Mesoamerica
As Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank points out, art historians traditionally “tend to separate Mesoamerica and the American Southwest, as if the peoples who lived in these areas did not interact. We now know this is misleading, and was not the case.” Naming conventions and current national borders often irrationally separate cultures and spaces from one another in the present, when really, there was a tremendous amount of interaction and connection between people of present-day Mexico and the American Southwest. Kilroy-Ewbank draws attention to archaeological excavations at Pueblo Bonito that connect Chacoan life and culture to Mesoamerica, through cacao remnants found in pottery and the remains of birds native to Mexico. Through a rich network of trade, many cultures in this chapter were very much connected, despite their names or geographical locations.
Naming by Outsiders: What is okay and what is not?
In discussing Native American, First Nations, and Indigenous art, it is very important to name the culture and artist’s identity, specifically providing the nation or tribe’s name in the original language, when possible. With contemporary artists and figures, it is also important to identify them as they self-identify. Terminology can be personal in this way. For instance, artist Erica Lord identifies herself as Athabascan, Iñupiaq, Finnish, Swedish, English, and Japanese, but James Luna, who was of Luiseño, Ipai, and Mexican descent, often self-identified more simply as “Luiseño Indian.” Both use their art as a form of critique and exploration of perceived identity, often with a side of humor, such as in works like Luna’s 1996 self-portrait Half Indian/Half Mexican.
Please do not be thrown off, either, by terminology as it changes and evolves. As Gregory Younging argues in Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples, “[t]he process of decolonizing language surrounding Indigenous peoples is not finished; terms, names, and styles continue to evolve.” It is important to be adaptive and respectful in using the appropriate terms and in keeping up with the current language.
In her 2021 introduction to Notable Native People, Adrienne Keene notes:
“Tribal names can be a bit tricky—there are official federally recognized names and more colloquial versions of those names, widely used (but not preferred) names given by settlers, as well as Native language names and other names that may be preferred by tribal members. Many of the names you may be familiar with, such as Sioux (for Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota) or Winnebago (for Ho-Chunk), were names given by settlers and do not come from Native languages, so many of these names are not preferred or are falling out of favor. Some settler-given names, however, like Osage, are considered acceptable and widely used. When noting the tribe(s) to which they belong, Native people may also choose to include (or not to include) their specific band or clan affiliation(s).”
In this chapter, and throughout this book, there will be a number of instances in which names of people or places are the product of outsiders—in other words, a culture or place is named by a culture outside of that group. In some cases, these names have stuck, such as “Teotihuacan,” a name given by later Aztec discoverers and meaning the “Gathering Place of the Gods.” Other names, however, have purposely and rightfully gone into the historical rubbish bin, such as “Anasazi”—which, as mentioned later in this chapter, is Navajo in origin and means “ancient enemy.” Out of respect, the preferred name for the ancestors of the Pueblo people is either the Ancient Puebloans or Ancestral Puebloans. (This is further complicated by the fact that “Puebloan” comes from the Spanish word pueblo, referring to towns, communal adobe and stone buildings, and to the Indigenous people of the American Southwest who live in such dwellings.) Some contemporary tribal nations and people have decided to embrace colonial Spanish names or the label of “Indian,” while some have also rejected these. Reasons for doing so are rooted in complex histories and are uniquely personal. As the First American Art Magazine’s Style Guide notes, “many tribes in the United States use Indian in their official names for themselves, as is their right, so it is not up to outsiders to dictate.” Again, it is always recommended, when possible, to use the name preferred by a culture or individual.
Translation and Transliteration
Finally, when historians address and document terms, names, and words written in different languages, they are often translated (rendering the words from one language to an approximate equivalent in another) and also transliterated (reproducing the sounds from one system of writing to another based on phonetic similarity). Because of the difficulty of replicating the sounds of one language in another alphabet, words, terms, and names are often spelled differently or with multiple variants. One example of this is the Nasca culture of Peru, presented later in this chapter. As the Dallas Museum of Art notes, “‘Nazca’ and ‘Nasca’ are commonly used interchangeably, but generally Nasca is used to refer to the period and culture that inhabited this area, while Nazca is used to describe the region, town, and river.”
The incredibly complex Maya writing system, the earliest example of which dates to as early as 300 BCE, confounded scholars for centuries. It uses pictographic symbols, or glyphs, that record both entire words and individual spoken syllables. Not only could a single word be written in different ways, but the same glyph could take multiple different forms, making the script particularly challenging to decipher. As the documentary Cracking the Maya Code reveals, beginning to understand the written language entirely reconfigured scholars’ understanding of the Maya and their history—and has allowed a new generation to reclaim a language and culture that had been systematically and often brutally repressed.
Chapter Overview
This chapter covers a huge range of art, cultures, regions, and time periods and is truly only a brief overview and sampling of art from the ancient Americas. It is not at all exhaustive, so if you are moved by the art in this chapter, please do look into taking longer courses devoted to the Art of the Americas and Indigenous Native American Art. The chapter begins with North America, centering this book on the country and place of its origins, and then moves south to Mesoamerica and South America.
As mentioned in the opening story of this chapter, the original human occupants of these continents probably arrived from Asia sometime between 20,000 and 10,000 BCE—though maybe even further back. They spread throughout the continents, eventually developing agriculture and building urban settlements.
Objects overview
This chapter covers artwork that has inspired much later art and architecture in Mexico, Peru, and the United States. This includes art as famous as the Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde, Colorado; the Mayan architecture of Chichen Itza; and the monumental Nasca geoglyphs in Peru. This chapter addresses a wide range of architecture, earthenworks, funerary structures, portable sculpture, and ceramic vessels, including:
- the Great Serpent Mound in Southwestern Ohio, a squiggling snake made by the Adena, Hopewell, or Fort Ancient peoples
- the Ancestral Puebloans’ great cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde, Colorado
- the Codex Féjervary-Mayer, a cosmogram depicting how the Mexica thought of the universe
- the many ancient ballcourts found across Mesoamerica
- the great Temple of the Feathered Serpent in Teotihuacan
- the Mayan Stele H portraying a youthful rendition of the ruler 18-Rabbit at the Great Plaza in Copan, Honduras
- Mayan painted vessels depicting rulers and nobles, which, while sometimes used for a utilitarian function on earth, always carried the ultimate purpose of accompanying the deceased to the Underworld
- the Temple of Kukulcan, famed feathered serpent, at Chichen Itza (also known as “El Castillo”)
- the smiling (“Sonrientos”) ceramic figurines of the Veracruz people from the Remojadas region of Mexico
- the Nasca geoglyphs, depicting monumental 300-feet wide zoomorphic representations—visible from space
By the time you finish reading this chapter on the art of the Ancient Americas, you will be able to:
- Recognize land acknowledgements and know whose land you are on
- Analyze distinctive architectural and burial structures of two Native American civilizations in North America
- Identify the characteristics of the “Mother Culture” of the Olmec and recognize them in later Mesoamerican cultures
- Recognize the distinguishing features and themes of Mayan art
- Discuss the pottery, textiles, and earthworks of early Peruvian civilization
Want to know more?
Here are some additional resources you can explore to further your understanding of the art discussed in this chapter.
- Ross Andersen, “The Search for America’s Atlantis: Did people first come to this continent by land or by sea?,” for The Atlantic
- Freda Kreier, “‘Ghost tracks’ suggest people came to the Americas earlier than once thought,” for ScienceNews
- Clovis Culture, for SmartHistory
- Native Resource Center’s Guide to Indigenous Land Acknowledgements
- California State University San Marcos, “Land Acknowledgement Toolkit: You’re on California Indian Land, Now What? Acknowledging Relationships to Space and Place” [PDF]
- Sarah E. Baires, “White Settlers Buried the Truth About the Midwest’s Mysterious Mound Cities Pioneers,” for Smithsonian Magazine
- Olmec ceremonial ax (celt) in the form of a were-jaguar at the British Museum
- Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, "Creation Story of the Maya"
- The "Paracas Textile" at the Brooklyn Museum of Fine Arts
- Moche Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
- The Ballcourts of Chichén Itzá for Google Arts & Culture
- Nova, Cracking the Maya Code documentary
- Jim Scott, “Ancient DNA used to track abandonment of Mesa Verde in 13th century”
- Zachary Small, “Push to Return 116,000 Native American Remains Is Long-Awaited,” for The New York Times
- Kate Fitz Gibbon, “NAGPRA in Hawaii: Museum and Native Hawaiian Conflict