Page 583 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES

Beginning around A.D. 1000 a transformation vocabulary of artistic expression, employing Our knowledge of these high cultures
took place in the area the Spanish were later to human and animal imagery in which changing depends heavily on the results of archaeological
call La Florida. Large multivillage communities meanings can be traced over time. Birds repre- investigation. Contact between the Europeans
came to replace the simpler forms of social sented the upper world, associated with the sun and the indigenous peoples of this area was
organization that had formerly predominated. and heavenly sources of sustenance; the ser- sporadic until the eighteenth century. Never-
Towns of considerable size developed, centered pent stood for the opposing dangerous forces of theless, diseases introduced from Europe in the
around earthen platforms, sometimes of the underworld. At the end of this period, the sixteenth century soon decimated the native
immense size, that were erected to support the time of contact with Europe, the human form populations and drastically changed their social
houses of chiefs, ancestor shrines, and sacred could represent the gods, the ancestral dead, structure. The culture that had previously pre-
fires. and, possibly, the living representative of the vailed in this area is only now becoming under-
The cultures in the Southeast evolved a rich ancestral line. stood and appreciated.

424-427

WOODEN ANIMAL FIGURES

C. 1OOO
Glades Culture (Key Marco)
424: DEER FIGUREHEAD
7
3
20 x 18 x 17.2 (y /s x 7 x 6 /4J
425: WOLF FIGUREHEAD
3
2
7
37 x 24 x 15 fi4 /2 x 9 /s x 5 /s)
426: PELICAN FIGUREHEAD
3
3
11 .2 x 6 x 8 (4 /s x 2 /s x 3 Vs)
The University Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology, Philadelphia
427: CAT FIGURINE
3
3
15.2 X 7 X 4.4 (6 X 2 /4 X 1 /4J
Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington
These four wooden sculptures from Key Marco,
off the west coast of Florida, are part of an
extraordinary archaeological find made in sub-
merged muck in the 18905 (Gilliland 1975). The
pieces were found together in the ruins of what is
believed to have been a community shrine. The
figureheads were probably part of a building.
Similar carved posts have been found in a col-
lapsed mortuary structure and shrine in the Lake
Okeechobee basin to the east that dates from
around A.D. 200 (Sears 1982). Although the Key
Marco pieces are much more recent, they retain
similar constructional details and carving style.
While often described as fifteenth-century, their
date has been more recently estimated, on the
basis of carbon 14 tests, to about A.D. 1000 and
thus at the beginning of the Mississippian period
(Widmer 1988, 89-93). However, the subject
matter of these carvings, which focuses on locally
available animals (dolphin, marine turtle, crab,
pelican, wolf, alligator, and duck), is more in keep-
ing with the imagery of the period before that
date. As the Mississippian period progressed,
animals of pan-regional mythic signficance (hawk,

582 CIRCA 1492