Mounds are an earthwork that is consisted up of large hills of earth that are round and project above the surface. Mounds were made by man to use them for a variety of reasons including ceremonies or burial sites. “Ceremonial centers built by American Indians from about 2,200 to 1,600 years ago existed in what is now Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan, as well as elsewhere.” (Moundbuilders, Indians of the Midwest, 2016) Mainly the people who build these mounds were hunters, fishermen, and planters. Several miles between each other, along bodies of water including river and lakes, was where the mounds could be found. The communities were made up of mostly blood family members and their leaders were the elderly. The mounds …show more content…
Instead of mounds, in today’s time, we use funeral homes to pay respects to the dead through ceremonies. Since the 19th century, several years of hard work were put into the making of these mounds. They were made up of earth, sod, sand, and mud. The picture below is an example of how the community had the set up around the mound. It was a large hill covered in grass that had stairs on the side made for the use to climb up it. Streams of water, including the Great Lakes, Ohio river valley, and Mississippi River valley, are surrounding it as well as the homes of the people living in the community. “These burial mounds were rounded, dome-shaped structures that generally range from about three to 18 feet high, with diameters from 50 to 100 feet.” (The United States National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 2016) The people who build these mounds were very religious and revolved their life around traditions and the mound was a big part of their traditional ways. Recently, anthropologist found mounds to be shaped like animals. People would decorate the top of the mounds with rocks to help create and outline image of an animal. This could be a result in a ritual significance. “In another Peruvian coastal area, the Casma Valley, Benfer discovered two additional birdlike figures, both "looking" toward the June solstice sunrise.” (Mysterious Animal-Shaped Structures, Stephanie Pappas,
Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi, by Timothy R. Pauketat, is on the history, society, and religious customs of the Cahokian people. Consisting of twelve chapters, each chapter deals with a different aspect of Cahokian society. Chapter one opens up by telling the reader how the stars in the sky played an important role in the Native American belief system. The Planet Venus was the key figure in all of this, in fact the ancient Maya believed Venus to be a god. According to the Cahokians , Venus had a dual nature, in the daytime Venus was viewed a masculine, and in the evening it was seen as feminine. In the same chapter, Pauketat lets us know about the discovery of, two hundred packed-earth mounds constructed in a five-square mile zone represented the belief systems of the Cahokian people. Historical archeology was the main reason for the discovery of two hundred earth packed mounds. At its peak, Cahokia had a population of over ten thousand, not including the people who lived in the towns surrounding the city. By the time the 1800s came around, the European Americans had already been living in North America for some time; however, many Europeans refused to acknowledge the Native American role in building these ancient mounds. Instead, they believed the mounds to been built by a race of non-Indians. Due to the preservation of Cahokia within a state park and modern highway system, many things became lost. Since many things became lost, very few archaeologists have a good understanding of Cahokia. While there may be a loss of a complete picture, archaeologists are still making progress with numerous discoveries. These discoveries bring into question long-held beliefs such as a people who were peaceful an...
Many cultural traits are recognized as being a characteristic of the Mississippian culture. Although not every tribe practiced every trait considered to be Mississippian, they were discrete from their ancestors with the taking on of some, or all of these traits. The first major characteristic of the Mississippian culture is the construction of large, earthwork mounds. These mounds were usually square or rectangular. They were occasionally circular. Structures such as temples or burial buildings were usually constructed on top of these mounds.
These tribes were extremely smart people. They did not build out in the middle of nowhere by themselves. Many villages were created. This offered many properties to the cultural lifestyle of these tribes. The village offered significantly more protection from outsiders as well as almost forcing people of the community to band together and become a close knit unit. These villages consisted of multiple longhouses built in the middle with a palisade wall around the outside such that people could not get in from the outside without coming through the doors. This w...
The funerary rituals introduced by the Egyptians were the most intricate, spiritual rites in their times and, perhaps, even to this day. Their elaborate customs, tombs, and gifts to the dead were representative of their pious, devoted nature. Albeit not all were as imposing as the oldest and still remaining Seven Wonder of the World, the Pyramids of Giza, all were meaningful and sacred. The Egyptians, highly reverent of their dead, adopted ornate, religious burial practices to fit to every member of their society.
When researching Pueblo dwellings and the Anasazi people "Anasazi meaning ancient ones in the Navajo language"(Lynnd2012). Information retaining to the culture and how permanent dwellings did not start until the Anasazi started growing their food. Prior to agriculture, all food was product of hunting and gathering, this made moving across the country more frequent to be able to gather enough food. Once they started to farm and cultivate they stated building the first sets of housing which consisted of holes in the grounds and only later would they build on top of the holes with stone and mortar, this didn't happen till around 750AD and was a means for storage.
Mandan villages were the center of the social, spiritual, and economic lives of the Mandan Indians. Villages were strategically located on bluffs overlooking the river for defense purposes, limiting attacks to one land approach. The Mandan lived in earth lodges, which are extremely large, round huts that are 15 feet high and 40-60 feet in diameter. Each hut had a vestibule entrance, much like the pattern of an Eskimo igloo, and a square hole on top, which served as a smokestack. Each earth lodge housed 10-30 people and their belongings, and villages contained 50-120 earth lodges. The frame of an earth lodge was made from tree trunks, which were covered with criss-crossed willow branches. Over the branches they placed dirt and sod, which coined the term earth lodge. This type of construction made the roofs strong enough to support people on nights of good weather. The floors of earth lodges were made of dirt and the middle was dug out to make a bench around the outer edge of the lodge. Encompassing...
As the birds are singing their sweet melody, the terrain of Arlington National Cemetery is filled with sadness. Although the brilliant rays of sun are shinning through the thick colossal treetops, there is a chill in the air. While watching the mourners, the feeling of their sorrows is all too real.
However, that meaning is not always known. It is believed that Stonehenge was most likely made to bring people of a community together as well as to mark a place where individuals could gather to perform rituals, although many theories about why it was built and the purpose it serves exist. For example, recent studies show that the monument may mark the graveyard of a ruling dynasty. There is evidence of over 200 cremated human remains that have been buried at the site within a period of 500 years. Some evidence suggests the site may have been a piece in a larger series of structures used for funerary rituals. The only thing that is knows for sure “is that Stonehenge held meaning for the Neolithic community that built it”
The Olmecs are the earliest known Mesoamerican civilization. Around 1200 B.C. the Olmecs originated as a primitive people living and farming on the shores of Mexico (Stanton 91). Soon, however, they began to build cities such as San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Monte Alban. These “cities” were religious centers where people gathered to worship, and were not populated (Stanton 91). The first of these centers, San Lorenzo, was built c. 1150 B.C., on a flat topped, man-made mountain. It was mysteriously abandoned 200 years later (Stanton 92-93). La Venta, built between 1000 and 600 B.C., sat on an island in a swamp (Stanton 93). Later, around 500 B.C., Monte Alban, which was used as a religious center even after the Olmecs faded, was built on an immense mountain (Stanton 93). The cities were made up of temples and plazas, and decorated by monumental stone heads, which weighed up to 50 tons (Stanton 93)! These heads probably represented their early kings and had distinct helmets (Kingfisher 32). It is incredible how the Olmec people transported the stone from the distant mountains to La Venta, near the shore, without the aid of work animals or carts. It appears that the Olmecs did this grueling work for their gods willingly, as there is no evidence of forced labor (Stanton 93). The Olmecs probably worshipped the jaguar, as it appears so often in their artwork. There are also many e...
It was of the most important ceremonies the Huron’s did, generally referred it to “the Kettle.” If the bodies did not sustain violent death they would remove them from their temporary burials in the village’s cemeteries to a great big ossuary. It appeared to held whenever a large village were to move and thus can “no longer possible to protect and care for the bodies buried in the adjacent cemetery.” It is very important to the Huron’s that the bodies were placed in a common grave “because their dead relatives were united in this way.” They invited other friendly tribes to attend this ceremony. The final burials was away to release the souls of the dead, and allow then to go to the land where Iouskeha and Aataentsic lived.
Native Americans chose to live off the land such as animals and the trees for houses from the time of early civilization in the Americas to when Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic. In Thomas Morton’s writing he said “they gather poles in the woods and put eh great end of them in the ground, placing them in form of a circle.”
As part of this bipartite view, death is "birth" into a new world, and many Pueblo burial practices parallel those of birth except that four black lines of charcoal separate the dead from his home in the village while four white lines of cornmeal mark the walls of a newborn baby's home.
The Egyptian pyramids and the Etruscan burial practices are very much alike. They both consist of burying the dead in a special grave where they are both honored and still remembered depending on how the grave was made. The Egyptian pyramids were a much larger burial ground compared to the Etruscans such as example 8.4 The Great Pyramids. Gizeh, Egypt. These great pyramids usually consisted of huge chambers with many rooms to live in and were usually the tombs for pharaohs unlike the Etruscan which were for an average person. Both of these cultures did include tombs that had been furnished to perceive an actual human being such as example 8.5 Innermost Coffin of Tutankhamen. Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Another huge difference between these two
The Day of the Dead Museum showed many scenes that depicted homes decorated as they would be on the day of the dead. In one scene they showed how a typical mexican home looks like on the day of the dead, it showed the way the families would be dressed, how their houses would be decorated and the types of food and drink that they would have on that day. The exhibiton shows how the families used to honor their loved ones by putting up their personal items and pictures. The 19th century mourning customs showed how the Americans handled grief in that time period. This exhibit showed things like the hair of a departed family member would be taken to professional weavers that made them into intricate jewelry patterns and put them on display, it also showed how a family’s clothes would like for someone that died for example, a widow would always have a white collar to signify her from the other people and a wooden clock was used in the tra-dition of a family that was mourning in the Victorian era, the headstone contained the names of the deceased family members and the family would remember their deceased whenever they looked at the
Each block weighs fifty tons! They would thatch the roofs with tree trunks and straw. After the buildings were constructed, the Incan people would smooth the stones with sand, mud, and clay to make the structures look polished. The people who inhabited this ancient site considered it to be magical because of the Andes Mountains and the Amazon River. The Temple of the Condor was a place of worship where the head of the condor was used as an altar for sacrifices.