Florida North Regional

"Early Art of the Southeastern Indians is a visual journey through time, highlighting some of the most skillfully created art in Native North America. The remarkable objects described and pictured here, many in full color, reveal the hands of master artists who developed lapidary and weaving traditions, established centers for production of shell and copper objects, and created the first ceramics in North America. Presenting artifacts originating in the Archaic through the Mississippian periods--from thousands of years ago through A.D. 1600--Susan C. Power introduces us to an extraordinary assortment of ceremonial and functional objects, including pipes, vessels, figurines, and much more. Drawn from every corner of the Southeast--from Louisiana to the Ohio River valley, from Florida to Oklahoma--the pieces chronicle the emergence of new media and the mastery of new techniques as they offer clues to their creators' widening awareness of their physical and spiritual worlds. The most complex works, writes Power, were linked to male (and sometimes female) leaders. Wearing bold ensembles, consisting of symbolic colors, sacred media, and richly complex designs, the leaders controlled large ceremonial centers, each noteworthy in regional art history, such as Etowah, Georgia; Spiro, Oklahoma; Cahokia, Illinois; and Moundville, Alabama. Many objects were used locally; others circulated to distant locales. Power comments on the widening of artists' subjects, starting with animals and insects, moving to humans, then culminating in supernatural combinations of both, and she discusses how a piece's artistic "language" could function as a visual shorthand in local style and expression, yet embody aniconography of regional proportions. The remarkable achievements of the southeastern artists delight the senses ad engage the mind, while giving a brief glimpse into the rich, symbolic world of feathered serpents and winged beings.

Raymond D. Fogelson, Volume 14 editor, William C. Sturtevant, General Editor. Describes the prehistory, history, and culture of the Native American aboriginal peoples who lived in the region north of the urban civilizations of central Mexico. Includes 64 chapters on Indians from Florida and the southern Appalachians and the Carolina Piedmont to the southern Mississippi River Valley.